Sosthène Weis

Biography

Let us begin with a figure: more than five thousand watercolours. That is the count for a man who spent most of his working time as an architect.

Sosthène Weis was born on 29 January 1872 in Mertzig, near Ettelbruck. His father, François Weis, was a tanner and also dealt in timber. Weis finished secondary school at the Athénée in Luxembourg City; there, according to one account, Michel Engels first introduced him to graphic art. He began drawing early: as a child he decorated his letters with floral designs. From 1891 he studied civil engineering at the Polytechnic in Aachen, then at the Technical University in Munich. After his studies he worked for several years in Munich for the well-known architect Hans Grässel.

He returned to Luxembourg in 1902 and married Marie Pütz the same year; they had three children. At about the same time the government commissioned him to carry out a study connected with the Maison de Santé, a hospital in Ettelbruck. In 1904 he designed the Benedictine convent in Peppange, in 1905 he succeeded Prosper Biwer as government architect, and in 1917 he became chief architect of the steel company ARBED. Together with René Théry of Brussels he supervised the construction of the company’s new headquarters in Luxembourg City and built housing for its workers and employees. Among his best-known buildings are the Hôtel des Postes, which was the city’s main post office until 2017, the Lycée technique des arts et métiers in Limpertsberg, extensions to the spa facilities at Mondorf-les-Bains, and the ARBED building itself.

Abroad, Weis attended art courses and studied watercolour painters, above all William Turner. He took his brushes and paints everywhere, judging by the accounts. In Luxembourg City he went down into the Pétrusse and Alzette valleys or out to the suburbs in search of subjects, and he went back to the same spot when the light had changed, sometimes years later. He also painted across the country: the Moselle, the mining towns of the south, the hills of the north. In addition, there are watercolours brought back from neighbouring countries and from trips to Turkey, Tunisia, Greece and Yugoslavia. His early work, up to 1900, shows the mark of his architectural interests: buildings are rendered with great precision. After 1915 his romantic post-impressionist style takes shape, with a warm palette in which violets, blues and ochres abound. He could convey the misty light of early morning, the heat of noon, the haze in the valleys at sunset. Over the years his rendering became less exact and more suggestive. He would quickly sketch the main lines of a scene, then lay on washes of colour broadly and freely.

He died on 28 July 1941 in Luxembourg City. Postage stamps bearing reproductions of his paintings have been issued in Luxembourg, and one of the capital’s streets is named after him.