Nicolas Liez

Biography

Liez's best-known work is his view of the City of Luxembourg from the Fetschenhof. He drew it, painted it in oil and published it as a lithograph in 1870, just when the demolition of the fortress walls had begun. The artist raised the cliffs and the railway bridge slightly to stress the fortifications, but the skyline of the city is still recognisable.

Liez himself was born elsewhere.

He was born on 14 October 1809 in Neufchâteau, in the French Vosges. His father, Jean-Joseph Liez, was a French cobbler; his mother, Marie Weber, came from Luxembourg. In 1812 the family moved to Luxembourg, and in 1814 his father took up Luxembourg nationality. From 1825 the boy studied at the drawing school under Jean-Baptiste Fresez, and in 1827 he won a silver medal there. He then continued his studies in Belgium, at Charleroi and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Mons. There he learned lithography. It is certain that from the 1830s he worked as a lithographer in Luxembourg, and that until 1851 he was employed as a copperplate engraver at the ceramics factory in Septfontaines. The album “Voyage pittoresque à travers le Grand Duché de Luxembourg” came out in 1834; it is generally regarded as the work of an artist at the height of his powers. Later, lithographs of views of the country became designs for tableware: scenes from them were transferred to plates made in the workshops of the Boch family. After 1851 Liez ran his own lithographic workshop.

He could not make a living from art alone. He painted pictures, made lithographs, sculpted, did decorative work, renovated the facades of old houses and carved monuments and gravestones. He gave drawing lessons, including for people who worked on weekdays and could study only on their day off. He is also credited with the first experiments in photography in Luxembourg.

In 1866 Liez bought a ceramics workshop in Audun-le-Tiche, but the business failed and by 1870 he had been forced to give it up. The year of purchase is given differently: 1860 or 1866. In 1870 he moved to Dresden and became artistic director of the local earthenware factory of Villeroy & Boch. His earlier Luxembourg subjects proved useful there too: his graphic work was used to decorate tableware.

He was not a portraitist like his teacher Fresez. But his landscapes of Luxembourg, the French Ardennes and the surroundings of Dresden, together with his lithographed views of the lands on the German border, made him, by general opinion, the country's best graphic artist of the 19th century. Among his paintings are the historical scene “Death of John the Blind”, flowers, stations of the cross and horses in their stables. It seems to me that this variety says more about commissions than about choice.

Liez died in Dresden on 30 August 1892. He left four children. In the City of Luxembourg a street in the Limpertsberg district is named after him.