From the Moselle into the world

Frantz Seimetz left behind a substantial œuvre and is renowned for his portraits and charming landscape paintings in the impressionist style. Alongside various loan items, the exhibition showcases for the first time a recently restored ensemble of approximately 70 works, most of which form part of a bequest to the City of Luxembourg by the painter’s widow.

Born in Grevenmacher on the Moselle on 21 April 1858, Seimetz initially worked as a painter and decorator, before leading industrialist and minister Antoine Pescatore discovered his artistic talent and became his patron. Following an apprenticeship, Seimetz moved to Brussels to study painting in 1875. He subsequently attended the Munich Academy of Fine Arts (1879-1881) and the Paris École des Beaux-Arts (1881-1887).

In 1887, he relocated to the United States, from where he travelled to the Antilles, Mexico and Canada. It was only in 1896 that he returned to Luxembourg, accompanied by many painted impressions of these countries. Together with his wife Marie-Antoinette Bourger, he embarked on further travels throughout Europe, which took him to the Baltic Sea, Munich, the Alsace, the South of France and Italy, among others.

In 1904, he was awarded the Grand-Duke Adolphe Prize, together with painter Dominique Lang.

From 1916 onwards, Seimetz lived in Echternach. This period of his life yielded a large number of works featuring Luxembourg landscapes, among them the Mullerthal, which brought him fame.

Unable to paint in later life due to an eye condition, Seimetz devoted himself to authoring the four-volume work Der Feuersalamander (The fire salamander, published from 1931 to 1934)

Frantz Seimetz was the first Luxembourgish artist to espouse impressionism and to favour open-air painting. This exhibition featuring oil paintings and watercolours pays tribute to an important figure in Luxembourg’s history of art at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, while also drawing the attention of the wider public to the unusual life story of the artist.