Palais IdéalFerdinand Cheval (1836- 1924)

Photograph by Seymour Rosen. ©SPACES

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Pavel Konecný

Used with permission of the photographer, Willem Volkersz

Used with permission of the photographer, Willem Volkersz

Used with permission of the photographer, Willem Volkersz

Used with permission of the photographer, Willem Volkersz

Used with permission of the photographer, Willem Volkersz

Used with permission of the photographer, Willem Volkersz

Used with permission of the photographer, Willem Volkersz

Used with permission of the photographer, Willem Volkersz

Used with permission of the photographer, Willem Volkersz

Used with permission of the photographer, Willem Volkersz

Status

Extant

Address

Rue du Palais Idéal, Hauterives, 26390, France

Built

1879-1912

Visiting Information

Open to the public every day except Christmas and the first two weeks of January.

Website

www.facteurcheval.com/en/index.html

View All Images

About the Artist/Site

Ferdinand Cheval was born in the small French village of Charmes in 1836. His parents died before he was out of his teens; he married early, and by the mid-1860s he had become a postman, covering over 18 miles daily on his unvarying route.

He escaped his routine through daydreams: in them, he was the builder of a fantasy palace with gardens, grottoes, towers, and sculptures. As Cheval would later recall, his daydream crossed into reality when he stumbled upon a strangely shaped stone while making his rounds one day in April 1879. He decided that since “nature has furnished the sculptures, I shall be the architect and the mason.” He began to collect stones to build his Palais Idéal (“Ideal Place”) in the garden behind his house in Hauterives.

Cheval worked on his Palais for 34 years, embedding found stones in cement and reinforcing them with wire. Though pieced together over several decades and in a multitude of idioms, its grottos, waterfalls, subterranean chambers, and great towers nevertheless achieve great visual coherence.

Cheval’s discovery exemplifies the enormous power of the found object to motivate the artist: a chance encounter with a fragment of stone or a piece of broken glass is often the incentive to a life’s labor. The Palais is among the oldest surviving, most extensive, and most extraordinary of art environments worldwide; it is also a virtual encyclopedia of the forms and themes of visionary environments: architecture, sculpture, grottoes, and temples are employed to convey ideas about religion, patriotism, brotherhood, equality, individual freedom, and self-motivated labor.

Ridiculed in his day, Cheval’s Palais Idéal is now one of France’s National Historic Landmarks and is open to the public every day except Christmas and the first two weeks of January.

~Jo Farb Hernández, 2011

Contributors

Jo Farb Hernández

Materials

cement, stone, wire

SPACES Archives Holdings

The SPACES archive contains slides, negatives, prints, and postcards of the site.

Map & Site Information

Rue du Palais Idéal, 26390 fr
Latitude/Longitude: 45.2566565 / 5.028469