Ferdinand Cheval - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Ferdinand Cheval was a French postman who spent thirty-three years of his life building Le Palais Idéal (the "Ideal Palace") in Hauterives

Hauterives

Hauterives is a commune in the Drôme department in southeastern France.-Geography:The Galaure flows southwest through the middle of the commune. It is home to Ferdinand Cheval's self-made Ideal Palace.-Population:-References:*...

. The Palace is regarded as an extraordinary example of naïve art

Naïve art

Naïve art is a classification of art that is often characterized by a childlike simplicity in its subject matter and technique. While many naïve artists appear, from their works, to have little or no formal art training, this is often not true...

architecture.

Origins

Ferdinand Cheval lived in Châteauneuf-de-Galaure

Châteauneuf-de-Galaure

Châteauneuf-de-Galaure is a commune in the Drôme department in southeastern France.Châteauneuf-de-Galaure has a Franciscan abbey, in the course of being restored, with a cart-track.-Population:-References:*...

, in the Drôme

Drôme

Drôme , a department in southeastern France, takes its name from the Drôme River.-History:The French National Constituent Assembly set up Drôme as one of the original 83 departments of France on March 4, 1790, during the French Revolution...

département of France. He had left school at the age of 13 to become a baker's apprentice but eventually became a postman

Mail carrier

A mail carrier, mailman, postal carrier, postman, postwoman , postman/postwoman , letter carrier or postie is an employee of the post office or postal service, who delivers mail and parcel post to residences and businesses...

Palais idéal

Cheval began the building in April 1879. He claimed that he had tripped on a stone and was inspired by its shape. He returned to the same spot the next day and started collecting stones.

For the next thirty-three years, Cheval picked up stones during his daily mail round and carried them home to build the Palais idéal. He spent the first twenty years building the outer walls. At first, he carried the stones in his pockets, then switched to a basket

Basket

A basket is a container which is traditionally constructed from stiff fibres, which can be made from a range of materials, including wood splints, runners, and cane. While most baskets are made from plant materials, other materials such as horsehair, baleen, or metal wire can be used. Baskets are...

. Eventually, he used a wheelbarrow

Wheelbarrow

A wheelbarrow is a small hand-propelled vehicle, usually with just one wheel, designed to be pushed and guided by a single person using two handles to the rear, or by a sail to push the ancient wheelbarrow by wind. The term "wheelbarrow" is made of two words: "wheel" and "barrow." "Barrow" is a...

. He often worked at night, by the light of an oil lamp

Oil lamp

An oil lamp is an object used to produce light continuously for a period of time using an oil-based fuel source. The use of oil lamps began thousands of years ago and is continued to this day....

.

The Palais is a mix of different styles with inspirations from Christianity to Hinduism

Hinduism

Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...

. Cheval bound the stones together with lime

Lime (mineral)

Lime is a general term for calcium-containing inorganic materials, in which carbonates, oxides and hydroxides predominate. Strictly speaking, lime is calcium oxide or calcium hydroxide. It is also the name for a single mineral of the CaO composition, occurring very rarely...

, mortar

Mortar (masonry)

Mortar is a workable paste used to bind construction blocks together and fill the gaps between them. The blocks may be stone, brick, cinder blocks, etc. Mortar becomes hard when it sets, resulting in a rigid aggregate structure. Modern mortars are typically made from a mixture of sand, a binder...

and cement.

Burial

Cheval also wanted to be buried in his palace. However, since that is illegal in France, he proceeded to spend eight more years building a mausoleum for himself in the Hauterives

Hauterives

cemetery. He died on 19 August 1924, around a year after he had finished building it, and is buried there.

Recognition

Just prior to his death, Cheval began to receive some recognition from luminaries like André Breton

André Breton

André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....

and Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

. His work is commemorated in an essay by Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin was a French-Cuban author, based at first in France and later in the United States, who published her journals, which span more than 60 years, beginning when she was 11 years old and ending shortly before her death, her erotic literature, and short stories...

. In 1932, the German artist Max Ernst

Max Ernst

Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...

created a collage

Collage

A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....

titled The Postman Cheval. The work belongs to the Peggy Guggenheim

Peggy Guggenheim

Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim was an American art collector. Born to a wealthy New York City family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who went down with the Titanic in 1912 and the niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, who would establish the Solomon R...

Collection and is on display there. In 1958, Ado Kyrou made Le Palais idéal, a short film on Cheval's palace.

In 1969, André Malraux

André Malraux

André Malraux DSO was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman. Having traveled extensively in Indochina and China, Malraux was noted especially for his novel entitled La Condition Humaine , which won the Prix Goncourt...

, the Minister of Culture

Minister of Culture (France)

The Minister of Culture is, in the Government of France, the cabinet member in charge of national museums and monuments; promoting and protecting the arts in France and abroad; and managing the national archives and regional "maisons de culture"...

, declared the Palais a cultural landmark and had it officially protected. In 1986 Cheval was put on a French postage stamp.

It is open for visitors every day except Christmas Day and New Year's Day.

Chuck Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk

Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk is an American transgressional fiction novelist and freelance journalist. He is best known for the award-winning novel Fight Club, which was later made into a film directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter...

's novel Choke

Choke (novel)

-Plot summary:Choke follows Victor Mancini and his friend Denny through a few months of their lives with frequent flashbacks to the days when Victor was a child. He had grown up moving from one foster home to another, as his mother was found to be unfit to raise him...

includes a character named Denny who, like Cheval, is an uneducated deliveryman who gradually collects and assembles stones into his "dream home."

External links

Postman Cheval's website in English and French
Le Palais Idéal du Facteur Cheval (requires Flash).
Expo.htm at perso.wanadoo.fr" Expo Coco Peintre du Facteur Cheval-1987 Hauterives France
Hauterives and Palais Idéal Photogallery
Album Mon Cheval, a French blog's photogallery.
Palais Idéal Ferdinand Cheval (feature article).

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Origins

Palais idéal

Burial

Recognition

See also

External links