During my stay in France, I had the pleasure of visiting the Drôme department, blessed both geographically and agriculturally. Drôme is a department in southeastern France named after the Drôme River and lies within the region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.
The region has very charming villages and unspoiled natural beauty. This is Châteauneuf-de-Galaure, the village where I had my accomodation :
One day I went to Hauterives (7 km away from Châteauneuf-de-Galaure) to see the wierdest thing ever, Palais idéal (the "Ideal Palace") built by the french postman Ferdinand Cheval. This guy spent 33 years of his life to build this thing because of a dream he had :
I was walking very fast when my foot caught on something that sent me stumbling a few meters away, I wanted to know the cause. In a dream I had built a palace, a castle or caves, I cannot express it well... I told no one about it for fear of being ridiculed and I felt ridiculous myself. Then fifteen years later, when I had almost forgotten my dream, when I wasn't thinking of it at all, my foot reminded me of it. My foot tripped on a stone that almost made me fall. I wanted to know what it was... It was a stone of such a strange shape that I put it in my pocket to admire it at my ease. The next day, I went back to the same place. I found more stones, even more beautiful, I gathered them together on the spot and was overcome with delight... It's a sandstone shaped by water and hardened by the power of time. It becomes as hard as pebbles. It represents a sculpture so strange that it is impossible for man to imitate, it represents any kind of animal, any kind of caricature.
I said to myself: since Nature is willing to do the sculpture, I will do the masonry and the architecture.
Courtesy of Palais Idéal du Facteur Cheval Monument Historique.
Cheval wasn’t a trained artist or architect so the journey to realize Palais Idéal was guided by visions, thats why his art is considered Naïve art ( Naïve art is any form of visual art that is created by a person who lacks the formal education and training that a professional artist undergoes )
Born in 1836 in Charmes-sur-l’Herbasse, France, to a peasant family, Cheval had limited schooling and later apprenticed with a baker.
In 1858 he got married and one night he awoke from a transcendent dream in which he had contrived a castle from rocks. Not long after, he left his home and his new wife without any word of where he was going. He would return six years later in 1863.
So here's the Ideal Palace :
First, he carried the stones in his pocket and then he used this wheelbarrow :
Cheval wanted to be buried in his palace. Because that is illegal in France, he spent eight more years building a mausoleum for himself in the Hauterives cemetery. He died on 19 August 1924, about a year after he had finished building it, and is buried there.
source www.facteurcheval.com
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