Great idea to bring together these two characters who a priori nothing brings together. On one side, Sarah Winchester (1839-1922), the heiress of the rifle manufacturer. On the other, Ferdinand Cheval (1836-1924), the modest postman from Drôme. Not to mention that an ocean separated them and they never met. And yet… Contemporaries, they could have crossed paths around their common passion: the long-term construction of a building as grandiose as it is improbable. Sarah will have spent twenty years of her life making this crazy dream come true; Ferdinand, for his part, devoted thirty-three years to his.
The Ideal Palace of Postman Cheval, in Hauterives, today brings together their destinies in an original face-to-face orchestrated by Frédéric Legros, director of the place, and Céline du Chéné, documentarian and columnist at France Culture, author of The Curse of Sarah Winchester. The counter-investigation (Michel Lafon). The contribution of the latter, whose work we can devour in addition to the exhibition, gives the appearance of a police investigation to these Architects of the strange.
Sarah Winchester’s disproportionate construction in San José (California).
/ © Courtesy History San José
We know the Ideal Palace, an emblem of naive architecture 12 meters high and 26 meters long, patiently built using stones gleaned from the paths by the postman from Hauterives, who found inspiration in nature , the Bible, postcards and the first illustrated magazines that he distributed every day to his fellow citizens. But many will discover here behind the scenes of the crazy enterprise led by Sarah Winchester, which continues, even today, to fuel fantasies and legend in the United States. Wife of Oliver Winchester’s son William – a self-made man who made her fortune in the arms trade – she lost her husband and her father-in-law three months apart. Without children, the 41-year-old widow finds herself a multimillionaire overnight. And rather than living a carefree life as a pensioner, she went to California to acquire, on the wild land of San José, an eight-room ranch, where she undertook disproportionate work in 1886, to the point of giving birth to a building of 161 rooms on four floors.
In this extraordinary construction, oddities abound: dead-end staircases, doors opening on the walls, windows placed on the ground. It was enough for the rumor to spread, as Céline du Chéné recounts: “It was said that the owner, cursed, lived in a haunted house because of the Winchester heritage, a name associated with thousands of people killed by the famous rifles.” The myth is still current, the residence remaining today a very popular stopover in the ghost tourism. The curator’s investigation, who sees this exhibition as “a real rehabilitation”, however goes against the image conveyed by the builder: far from being a hysterical dialoguing with malevolent spirits, she reveals herself as “a woman of taste, very intelligent and an excellent manager”. A sort of feminine Horse postman version of the American dream.
View of the exhibition “Architects of the strange”.
/ © Margot Montigny
“We wanted to explore the way in which the stories of builders are created and told,” emphasizes Frédéric Legros. To extend the face-to-face encounter between the two dreamers of yesterday, the tandem has brought together the works of contemporary artists fascinated by their journey, such as Martine Aballéa, who gives us an imaginary stroll through the habitat of Sarah Winchester, between texts and photographic images, or Olivier Morvan with his wall installation, The sprawling house. Going back in time, it is Piranesi and his Imaginary Prisons who invite themselves to the picture rails; the Italian engraver, champion of fantastic architecture in the 18th century, is at home here.