Jose Weiss (British, 1859-1919)

The Union Club of Cleveland, by gift of Caesar A. Grasselli II and Thomas F. Grasselli in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas S. Grasselli, 1952

Jose Weiss, a European landscapist and early aviator, was born to English parents in France where he lived until 1893 when he settled permanently in England. There he forged a career painting the Sussex landscape in a manner that combines aspects of French Barbizon painting with perhaps a bit of Constable’s passionate preoccupation with the restless English sky. His quiet scenes of cattle watering near a pool late in the day recall motifs favored by Daubigny and Corot, and were well received at the Royal Academy, Royal Society of British Artists, and Parisian salons.

Besides painting, Weiss was a tremendous glider enthusiast. Perhaps his keen attention to sky effects in his landscapes provide a hint of this fascination. His choice of residence in the windswept countryside at Houghton, near Arundel in Sussex presented prime opportunities both for painting and for flying the man-powered gliders he invented. Beginning in 1908, me made a series of flying wing gliders and powered aircraft, all based on the same bird-like wing configuration. The most famous of these “ornithopters” was the Kieth Weiss Aviette, designed together with Alexander Keith, which used foot pedals and levers to make the wings beat. While his Aviette never flew successfully, Weiss’s work on it and other models lead to the first successful designs made by Handley Page.