Monument aux morts

English translation

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History

In April 1922 the results of the competition launched by the City to build the war memorial are published, which give Gabriel Deroure, an architect from Thiers, as winner. The latter associates with Joanny Durand, who came second, in order to establish the final project. Inaugurated on 5 August 1923, the monument unites two squares in Thiers situated one below the other and exploits the monumental device of a succession of staircases and landings.

Description

The staircase preceded the construction of the monument, the overall composition of which thus integrates the three double flights of a staircase with ramp on ramp. The stringer walls were reworked on this occasion and accommodate inscriptions relating to the geographical zones of the battles. Rising on a plinth of hydraulic lime concrete is the monument in finely tooled ashlar stonework. The main part projects forward as a projecting section consisting of a wall articulated by seven bays framed by pilasters and flanked by bundles of oblique lances. These bays contain the names of the 500 soldiers who fell in the line of duty. The entablature consists of a solid mass flanked by two parallelepipeds decorated with wreaths of laurels, and whose truncated triangular pediment is crowned with a cockerel. This entablature contains in letters of gold the dedication and the dates of the conflict. The central part integrates into the first converging flights by low reliefs carved in white limestone: a peasant woman kneeling with her harvest and hiding her face in her hand, and a worker with his tools, joining his hands in prayer. At the centre and projecting out stand the two national heroes celebrated here, the Gallic hero and that of 14-18 perched on a tall pedestal made of Lens stone. The poilu gently rests his head on the Gaul's shoulder, perhaps Vercingetorix, who takes his hand and steps forward in an attitude of nobility and dignity. In putting the monument in perspective, one notes that the upper square also plays a role in the general orchestration, with its rows of trees offering a crowning, a sort of landscape attic. Thus a double movement is tied between the monument, which becomes part of the urban fabric, and the arrangement of the square which takes on monumental proportions. Gabriel Deroure and Joanny Durand are the designers of the monument. Joanny Durand (1886-1955) was born in Boën (Loire) in 1886. A pupil of the Ecole nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1910, he was wounded at the beginning of the fighting. Invalided out, he was sent on convalescence to Coutances, in la Manche. Gradually returning to his activities as a sculptor, he created eleven war memorials in his native department in which he invokes recurring national figures. Such as the medieval knight in armour or the Gaul (monument of Sail-sous-Couzan, Lycée Claude-Fauriel in St-Etienne, Boën, Saint-Julien d'Oddes). Similar iconographic inspiration is noted in the programme of the monument of Boën-sur-Lignon (outside the cemetery), where, again, a Gaul and a poilu figure side by side.