Born in 1836, the son of a farmer and a peasant himself before becoming a postal worker in 1867, Ferdinand Cheval built an architectural work like no other in the town of Hauterives (Drôme): an “ideal palace”, a unique example naive art applied to architecture.
The man whom history refers to as the “Horse postman” was an autodidact who never touched a trowel before 1879. In April of that year, during his tiring tour – 32 kilometers each day – he stumbled upon a stone with a singular shape. “I said to myself: Since nature wants to do sculpture, I will do the masonry.” Nicknamed “stumbling block”, it will be the first of his palace baptized “Temple of Nature” then “Ideal Palace”. From then on, he devoted his life to it. Thirty-three years of hard work, collecting stones at the side of the roads during his tour, returning to collect them in the evening with his wheelbarrow, working at night by the light of an oil lamp. He who never traveled built an incredible baroque palace, as if drawn from a dream, mixing Arab, Greek, Hindu cultures...
Taken for a “fad”, the postman Cheval is nevertheless convinced of the value of his work. He writes: “This marvel of which the author can be proud will be unique in the universe.” He wants to prove that you can be a son of the people and have genius. As he was refused the right to be buried there, he built “the Tomb of Silence and Endless Rest” in the communal cemetery, which he completed two years before his death in 1924.
The artistic avant-garde, with André Breton, Max Ernst and Picasso, immediately paid tribute to him. However, it was not until 1969 that the palace was classified as a historic monument. Sweet revenge for the Cheval postman, mocked yesterday and today universally hailed as a master of naive art.
