Today, Ferdinand Cheval is considered to be one of the most remarkable representatives of naive architecture, but during his lifetime people thought of him as the village idiot.
Did you know…
- the building that made him world famous is called Le Palais Idéal (the Ideal Palace)
- he was actually a postman; people called him Facteur Cheval
- how it all started:
- one day in 1879, he tripped on a stone and almost fell
- looking at the stone, he was overwhelmed by its beauty and he put the stone in his pocket
- the stone reminded him of a dream he had a year before. In that dream he was building a palace
- the next day he went back and found more stones. He continued to do this for 33 years
- Cheval bound the stones together with lime, mortar and cement and so he started to build his Ideal Palace
- he merely worked at night by the light of an oil lamp
- Just before he died, he received recognition from André Breton and Pablo Picasso
This was the first stone he collected:
This is the Ideal Palace:
- Cheval wanted to be buried in his Ideal Palace, but this is illegal in France
- thus, he started building a mausoleum in the same style as his Ideal palace on the local cemetary
- he spent 8 more years on the mausoleum
- 1 year after he was finished, he died
- Ferdinand “Postman” Cheval was buried in his Ideal Mausoleum
This is the mausoleum: