Monument des Freres Farman

The same plain. In the mid-nineteenth century Millet painted the peasants of The Angelus here, bent over their potato harvest. About half a century later, Maurice Farman was landing his biplane on it to reach the property his family owned in the village, on the Chemin de la Messe. With his brothers Henry and Dick he was among the pioneers of French aviation: it was Henry who, in 1908, flew the first officially witnessed kilometre in a closed circuit.

In August 1920 the plain even became a small airfield: by arrangement with the Farman company, the mayor, M. Caron, lent his fields. On 21 August the aviator Boissoutrot landed there in a Farman F-40, carrying the writer and aviator Louise Faure-Favier. The village turned out to greet them: Millet's grandson, an aviator himself, the painter Rodolphe Bodmer, André Rouveyre on his bicycle, and town councillor Georges Schaller in his motorcar.

The stele, the initiative of Commandant Louis Schoonwater, was inaugurated on 18 May 1985 in honour of all three brothers. The Plaine de l'Angélus has always drawn people who saw promise in open space: the painters looked for light, the aviators for lift.