Tilman-François Suys

Who was Tilman-François Suys?

Tilman-François Suys or Tieleman Frans Suys, was a Belgian architect who also worked in the Netherlands.

Suys completed his architectural education in Paris, where he studied under Charles Percier and won the Prix de Rome in 1812. During his stay in Rome he became a protégé of King William I of the Netherlands the new king of the Belgian and Dutch provinces unified in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. In 1817 he settled in Amsterdam and worked as an architect for the Dutch Crown. In this period his style shows the marks of the Empire style created for Napoleon by his teacher Charles Percier and Pierre François Léonard Fontaine.

From 1825 onwards, Suys was employed on a series of royal commissions in Brussels, a city that, together with The Hague in Holland had been given the title of capital of the new established kingdom. His projects in Brussels were more severely Neo-Classical in character. Important creations in Brussels include the great conservatory of the Botanical Garden of Brussels, which is noted for its innovative use of iron and glass construction, and the Royal Palace.

After the Belgian Revolution which established Belgium’s independence from the Netherlands, Suys remained in Brussels. He devoted himself mainly to the restoration of the new nation's historic monuments. Some of these projects, especially his Gothic Revival restorations, were not historically accurate, and were later harshly criticized. His renovation of the medieval Bouchout Castle at Meise, near Brussels, included not only Gothic Revival additions but also the earliest example of Flemish Renaissance Revival interior architecture in Belgium. Suys was also engaged in urban-scale projects, notably the project for the Leopold Quarter, commissioned to him in the 1830s and carried out in the following years. Eventually Suys continued to design other buildings in the new quarter designed by him. An example of the monumental buildings he designed later in his career is the Italianate church of Saint-Joseph on the Square Frère-Orban of the Quartier Léopold in Brussels. Suys continued to carry out commissions in the Netherlands after the revolution such as the Roman Catholic, Mozes and Aaron Church in Amsterdam built between 1831 and 1847.