Those of you of a curious nature will have noticed the stunning war memorial situated on Eymet’s Boulevard National. It was created by Gabriel FORESTIER who is honoured within the town by the eponymous Parc Gabriel Forestier. We can almost say he was a native of Serres as he was born just a mallet’s throw from what is now our Route de la Carpe.
We ourselves can’t do justice to his career so please visit https://sculpteurgabrielforestier.art. This site, designed by his grandaughter Natalie Forestier, gives a comprehensive account of his life and works.
As a taster we can offer you material from our collection of postcards and other memorabilia.
Postcards depicting the works of Gabriel Forestier
Article about Gabriel Forestier in the June 1922 edition of L’ART ET LES ARTISTES
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.