Hidden French Cultural Gems – France Today | EUROtoday

If you are keen to get off the crushed path in France to rediscover childlike wonderment, then write down the names of those three lesser-known French artists and explorers.

Joseph Ferdinand Cheval, Robert Coudray and Robert de Joly. Each certainly one of these males reworked a lifelong obsession into one thing superb and made their desires accessible to all of us as a reminder that not all issues of remarkable magnificence are present in museums. The legacy of those males is a trio of must-see sights in three, small, out-of-the-way villages.

The Ideal Palace of Postman Cheval, Hauterives, Drôme

In 1879, 43 year-old (Joseph) Ferdinand Cheval (1836-1924), a mailman within the Drôme, stumbled on a big, oddly formed stone. He picked it up and took it dwelling. His dream of constructing an enormous fantastical palace that might fulfill his must create began with that one rock. Every day on his 27-mile mail route he collected extra stones and for the subsequent 33 years used them to construct rooms, towers, staircases, large sculptures, tunnels and replicas of well-known buildings till his monument-to-a-dream was the scale of a real palace. He sculpted creatures of the ocean, land and sky, quizzical spherical faces and all through the construction etched his philosophy of life into stone plaques.

Homemade, tree-limb scaffolding allowed him to construct larger and better, drawing the eye, typically detrimental, of his neighbors in his little village of Hauterives. He persevered and on the age of 76 accomplished his “outsider art” masterpiece. His neighbors weren’t the one ones who seen Cheval’s Gaudi-like achievement. Famous trendy artists have visited and drawn inspiration from his dream citadel together with Pablo Picasso, Nikki de Saint Phalle, Max Ernst and André Breton. In 2018, the movie The Incredible History of Postman Horsestarring Jacques Gambin, the story of Ferdinand Cheval’s labor of affection, was launched into theaters. The drive to the Palais Ideal is a picturesque 36-minute drive from Tournon-sur-Rhône, Ardèche. Advance tickets are really helpful.