Frantz Seimetz

Biography

In 1932 Frantz Seimetz painted his last picture. He was seventy-four, and after that he took up the pen.

He was born on 21 April 1858 in Grevenmacher, a small town on the Moselle. He did not begin with painting: at first he worked as a house painter and decorator. By some accounts, he painted his first work, a still life of flowers, at the age of sixteen. The industrialist Antoine Pescatore noticed his talent and paid for his education. In 1875 Seimetz began his studies in Brussels, in 1879–1881 he worked at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, and from 1881 to 1887 he studied in Paris; the sources give the name of the Paris institution in different ways.

In 1887 he went overseas. The ticket, by some accounts, came from the honorary US consul. He visited Canada, the West Indies and Mexico; in the United States he spent several years in Dubuque, Iowa, and then in five months went down the Mississippi on a flatboat. The years of these journeys are thinly documented, and I would not try to reconstruct the exact route. Many of his portraits show people he met on his travels.

In 1897 he married Marie-Antoinette Bourger of Arlon, who was also an artist. The couple settled in Echternach, then moved to Arlon, and in 1923 to Luxembourg City. Their house, packed with old furniture and pictures, looked like a museum.

Echternach became the most productive place of his life: there he painted the surroundings, including the Mullerthal, the so-called Luxembourg Little Switzerland. In all he made more than a thousand oils, watercolours and sketches of the capital and the country. Their quality is uneven, and in this he fell behind his friend Jean-Pierre Beckius, who is regarded as the national “Moselle painter”. Seimetz’s manner is mostly realistic and slightly romantic, bordering on Impressionism. After 1900 his palette became brighter and more colourful. He painted out of doors, and he is considered to have been the first Luxembourger to do so since Nicolas Liez, and the first of all to take up Impressionism. He was also the first Luxembourg artist to live from art alone.

His contemporaries thought him an eccentric: full moustache, small beard, curly hair, floppy hat, flowing clothes. He led a Bohemian and adventurous life and was always cheerful.

Among his portraits are likenesses of his wife and of Luxembourg friends: the poet Michel Rodange, Sosthène Weis, Michel Engels and Batty Weber. His best work is usually said to be the portrait of a fair-haired girl. Many of his self-portraits recall Rembrandt and Frans Hals. In 1904, together with Dominique Lang, he received the Grand Duke Adolphe Prize.

After giving up painting, Seimetz wrote first in German, then in Luxembourgish and finally in his Moselle dialect. From this came the book “Der Feuersalamander” (“The Fire Salamander”): anecdotes and tales of his youth, along with passages in which he sets out his political and religious views. He died on 26 October 1934 in Limpertsberg, a district of Luxembourg City.