LONDON.- The Royal Academy of Arts presents Painting the French Riviera, a major exhibition exploring the rise and development of modern art on the Mediterranean coast of France from the 1870s to the 1960s. Bringing together over 120 paintings, sculptures and drawings, as well as film, books and travel posters, the exhibition examines how artists including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Yves Klein found inexhaustible inspiration in the brilliant light, azure skies and luminous sea in the unspoilt Eden that was the South of France.
Spanning nearly 90 years, the exhibition traces the transformation of the Mediterranean coast into one of the defining landscapes of modern art. More than simply a place of retreat, the Riviera came to symbolise an ideal of artistic and spiritual renewal, inspiring artists to develop bold new ways of representing their surroundings. Painting the French Riviera focuses on key moments and figures that made significant contributions to the history of modern art. Works by Czanne, Renoir and Morisot explore this early fascination with the region, while a dedicated gallery focuses on Monet’s visits to the South of France in the 1880s, including his depictions of the landscapes at Bordighera and Cap Martin and later Antibes in such masterpieces as Morning at Antibes, 1888 (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia).
The exhibition features works by the Neo-Impressionists Paul Signac, Henri-Edmond Cross and Tho van Rysselberghe, whose pointillist technique was ideally suited to capturing the scintillating southern light. Works on display include Cross’s Les les d’or, les d’Hyres (Var), c.1891–1892 (Muse d’Orsay, Paris) and Signac’s Le Pin de Bertaud, 1900 (Private Collection). For these artists, the South of France represented not only visual inspiration but also a utopian ideal, associated with artistic freedom and social progress.
A further section explores the Fauves, led by Matisse and including Andr Derain and Georges Braque, who between 1905 and 1908 revolutionised painting through their complete liberation of colour for expressive purposes. At the same time, Aristide Maillol’s evocations of a classical past were greatly admired by Matisse and Picasso. The exhibition traces Matisse’s engagement with the Mediterranean coast, from his arrival at Saint-Tropez in 1904 to his later years in Nice, where he produced many of his most celebrated interiors and sea views, such as Interior at Nice (Room at Beau-Rivage), 1917–1918 (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia). These works are shown alongside paintings by Raoul Dufy, for example Golfe Juan, 1927 (McNay Art Museum, San Antonio), whose elegant depictions of Riviera life captured the glamour and sophistication of the interwar years.
Pierre Bonnard features prominently, with an entire gallery devoted to his radiant Mediterranean paintings made between 1904 and his death in 1947, particularly those produced after he settled at Le Cannet above Cannes in 1926, such as The Gate of the Villa du Bosquet in Le Cannet, 1944 (Muskegon Museum of Art, Muskegon).
Picasso’s long relationship with the Riviera is also examined through works spanning several decades from the 1920s through the early 1960s. Still Life with Mandolin, 1924 (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin) reveals his post-World War One shift toward a decorative, brighter style that departed from his earlier Analytic Cubist style. A suite of watercolours made in 1933 reflect Picasso’s deep connection to the region and its associations with mythology, antiquity and leisure. Ceramics made at the Madoura studio in Vallauris from the late 1940s through the 1960s reveal playful aspects of Picasso’s working practice. Masterpieces from the 1950s will include The Bay of Cannes, 1958 (Muse Picasso, Paris).
There is a gallery dedicated to iconic travel posters, books and films inspired by life on the Riviera, including F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night and Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, which situates the Riviera in a wider cultural context. The exhibition will conclude with works by Nicolas de Stal and Yves Klein, whose abstract evocations of sea, sky and colour, including De Stal’s Le Fort-carr d’Antibes, 1955 (Muse Picasso, Antibes) and Klein’s ANT 84, 1960 (Muse d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain (MAMAC), Nice) distilled the Mediterranean into its most elemental forms, offering a powerful culmination to this story of artistic invention and reinvention.
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