Étienne-Jules Marey in Beaune (21), Côte-d'Or (21)

Étienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) was a doctor, physiologist and inventor who was born in Beaune and died in Paris. This monument to him in the town of his birth is very impressive, with Marey seated and a series of moving horses at the side of him. He was one of the first people to methodically study 'la machine animal', photographically recording different movements of both animals and humans: chronophotographie, as Marey termed it. Among his many other creations, he also developed the sphigmograph (the precursor to the sphigmomanometer), making a portable version.

Xavier Forneret in Beaune, Côte-d'Or (21)

Xavier Forneret (1809-84) was one who got away from me, largely because he was buried in the cemetery in Beaune, and not only are there apparently no pictures of his grave, but anyway the cemetery is huge. As far as I know, unlike the less influential Adolphe Retté, there is no plaque on the house where he once lived, or on the site of where he lived. Fortunately, Wikipédia provided a photo in the public domain. But he was born in Beaune and was a writer, playwright and poet. The only son of a wealthy merchant (mainly in high quality wine), he inherited his father's property on his death in 1928. His fortune allowed him to self-publish, but without success. He staged a few plays at his own expense in Dijon, spent several years in Paris, and later returned to Beaune. He died largely forgotten, although the surrealists brought him out of oblivion and made comparisons between him and Lautréamont and Raymond Roussel. André Breton saw him as a precursor of automatic writing and a master of black humour.

René Julien in Beaune, Côte-d'Or (21)

The Belgian artist René Julien (1937-2016) sculpted L’Éloquente, which was transferred from the Hôtel Boussard de la Chapelle in Beaune to the mairie in Beaune in 2013. It was originally acquired by the town in 2010.

Pierre Joigneux in Beaune, Côte-d'Or (21)

Pierre Joigneaux (1815-92) was an extreme left-wing journalist born in Ruffey-lès-Beaune. He wrote for Le Journal du Peuple, Le Corsaire and Charivari, and was strongly opposed to Louis-Philippe I's government. In 1838 he received a four-year prison sentence for his writings in L'Homme libre, a republican paper published secretly. As a result of this experience, he published Les Prisons de Paris (1841). He was also a staunch believer in agronomy and was the founder of the 1872 law proposing an École nationale supérieure d'horticulture at Versailles.

Adolphe Retté in Beaune, Côte-d'Or (21)

Adolphe Retté (1863-1930) was born in Paris and died in Beaune: he was a symbolist poet and an anarchist writer, although he converted to Catholicism in 1906, when he rejected almost all of his former works. The plaque below is on the house where he lived from 1924 until his death, and where he died in poverty. I was unable to find his grave in the cemetery in Beaune as it is huge, and gives no indication of its famous people buried there.

La Grande Vadrouille mural in Beaune, Côte-d'Or (21)

Gérard Oury's film La Grande Vadrouille (1966), a World War II comedy, was the highest French box office success of all time until 2008, when it was eclipsed by Dany Boon's Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis. The film was made in a number of locations, among them various places in Paris, Vézelay, Meursault, and Beaune. It was in Beaune in 1996 that Patrick Bidaux executed this mural. Below I let the shots speak for themselves: the mural is essentially in two segments, from the left with the production team, prominently including Gérard Oury with his loud hailer, and on the right Louis de Funès with Bourvil in front of the Hôtel-Dieu in Beaune.