Early Life
Gabriel Forestier was born into a peasant family in Saint-Aulair D’Angle, which is a few strides away from Serres-et-Montguyard, on the 18th November 1889. He died in Paris on the 24th May 1969.
He was a precocious talent and came to local fame when he was 14 or 15 by sculpting a bust of M Bonnetoux or as another source has it by sculpting two heads on la falaise at La Galinière on the way to Serres. With the help of the Bonnetoux and Victorieux families and others he was enrolled at the School of Fine Arts in Bordeaux.
Eymet War Memorial
He returned to Eymet in 1908 and then journeyed to Paris in 1909, where he worked for a year and then did his military service in Vincennes until 1912 when he resumed his profession but with the outbreak of war in 1914 he was back in uniform until April 1919.
Appalled by what saw and went through in the war he was determined to reflect his beliefs in the war memorials that he created and refused payment for his Eymet monument. What makes it even more poignant is that Forestier must have known some of the names of the fallen that the monument was to celebrate. The monument brought him to national attention. His Eymet war memorial was publicised in the June 1922 edition of “L’Art et les Artistes”. As well as a glowing tribute to the work (see below) the magazine contained a loose insert of a photograph of the piece (see left).
“They are innumerable, like the glorious hecatombs they have to commemorate. It was inexorable. Most are unworthy of their object, and municipal taste — generally deplorable — which presided over their creation, on many occasions manifested itself in such a manner that we can nervously ask when the invasion of our beautiful country of France by all these lamentable sculptures will cease. Some years more and the traveller will not be able to pass through our towns, our villages, our countrysides, without covering his eyes.
Sometimes, however, some works of a moving simplicity or of a noble style, such as the one which we give a reproduction of as an illustration in this edition, emerge from the crowd of this hoard of vulgarities. We offer our sincere congratulations to M. Gabriel Forestier, whose name we are seeing today for the first time, and to whom we would gladly see a recompense worthy of his talent distributed from the Conseil Superieur des Beaux-Arts soon.”
Musée des Colonies
From 1928 to 1930 he collaborated with Alfred Janniot and Charles Barberis to create the running low relief decorating the façade of what in 1930 was the Musée des Colonies (now known as the Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration) situated Au bois de Vincennes in Paris. This low relief in stone, is one of the largest in the world with a height of 13 metres and a length of 110 metres. He seems to get less credit for this outstanding work than Janniot but there is a plaque where he is mentioned albeit playing second fiddle to Janniot but above Barberis. See the website of designer Katherine Irwin which also has some interesting photos of the Chloé 2014 Fall collection which used the reliefs as a backdrop to the fashion shoot and has influenced her work.
Other War Memorials
A few years later he was responsible for Bergerac’s war memorial, this time a bronze, and which was inaugurated 12th June 1927. Others that we are aware of are the monument in La Force (see above) – just to the west of Bergerac – and Ducey (Manche).
Later works & life
He travelled to Italy in 1920 and in 1923 or 1924 met his future wife. She, bizarrely, died as a result of their visit to the Vatican Library on the 22nd December 1931 when part of the roof collapsed. Five people were killed outright and she died of her injuries in the January of 1932.
In 1934 he won the Médaille d’or and his next major works were the brass doors of the Musée des Arts Modernes de la ville de Paris (Palais de TokYo) and in the Jardin du Luxembourg the sculpture La Messagère. One studio that we know of was in the rue de Vaugirard.
He spent the Second World War back in the Dordogne – one wonders whether he returned to Eymet. After which he continued to sculpt and was made a Knight and Officer of the Legion of Honour in c. 1951. He died in Paris in 1969.
Further reading: Gabriel Forestier, sculptor from Eymétois – Spirit of Dordogne-Périgord (espritdepays.com)