NICE.- In the Mediterranean and particularly the Côte d’Azur, Raoul Dufy found inspiration above and beyond that of the sea. The exhibition at the Musée des Beaux-Arts Jules Chéret showcases a series of paintings inspired by Nice as experienced through the artist's stays and walks here (mainly in 1926, 1927 and 1928, and then between 1933 and 1940) and explore their relationship with Dufy's decorative artwork from the 1920s. Dufy was one of the main promoters of a Côte d’Azur style through his repeated use of maritime and Nice themes (fish, swimmers, shells, palm trees) and through his ceramics and luxurious fabrics, notably in collaboration with the designer Paul Poiret and the company Bianchini-Férier.

Dazzled by the view of the Baie des Anges from his room at the Hôtel Suisse, Dufy tirelessly sought to capture it in painting between 1926 and 1927. Although he experimented with several different angles, particularly from the Ponchettes with a few fishing boats in the foreground, Dufy tended to repeat the same composition: the Bay curving to the right, with horizontal, parallel layers featuring the Promenade des Anglais punctuated by horses and carriages and elegant, hatted characters equipped with parasols, followed by a railing and finally the sea backed by hills. The landscape is cut up by several palm trees with their leaves and bark outlined in pure black. The same black is often used to paint the beach, as Dufy felt it was the best way he had found to depict harsh sunlight. In the distance and slightly to the right, the faintest outline of a monument that haunted Dufy until his death can be made out: the Promenade pier's casino.

Dufy took this eclectic stilted building erected in the 1880s and showered it in streams of gold, transforming it into an Arabian Night palace, focusing on the carnival-goers in their Harlequin and Pierrot disguises, the extraordinary light of the setting sun, the haze of the moonlight, the heat of the fireworks. Long after the artist moved away from Nice, and long after the Germans had destroyed the Old Casino in 1944, Raoul Dufy continued to paint and draw the oriental, ghostly outline of the building, especially in vibrant ink drawings. Through his passion for this motif, Dufy gradually began to assert the technique of uncoupling drawing and colour that so characterised his painting from the mid-1920s on. The Baie des Anges had a clear hand in enriching his palette of blues, infusing it with splashes of green to create the emerald and turquoise that so frequently shines through in the works brought together by this exhibition.

Yet these Nice paintings also unveil what lies at the core of Dufy's artwork, his ability to draw on memories of landscapes, colours, light and motifs to feed back into his compositions, painted after the fact in his studio as opposed to on-site, as illustrated by his sketch pads filled with colourful annotations. Born in Le Havre, throughout his life he returned to the same maritime motifs of sailors, swimmers, shells and waves that can be seen in works from his Nice period. Open windows, a core concept in his work, appear from the Channel to the Baie des Anges, although in Nice they feature lace curtains and louvered shutters in a bizarre split between the indoor light and outdoor view. Works that include his famous console positioned between two windows, sometimes accompanied by a mirrored wardrobe in the corner, are some of the most remarkable he produced, in which exteriors and interiors are orchestrated to spectacular effect through a play on reflections and contrasting colours. Icons of the Côte d’Azur, these views of Nice reveal a laboratory of motifs that Dufy set up from the very beginning of his career, and continued to revisit throughout his lifetime. Landscapes, studios, bouquets and racetracks mingle and collide, thus revealing a style that is largely founded on memories of impressions, imagination and freedom.

Raoul Dufy and his wife Emilienne kept some of the most beautiful pieces painted in Nice for the rest of their lives. Raoul Dufy passed away in 1953 and was buried at the Cimiez cemetery, in the district where he once lived for a few years, in a villa named Villa Guelma after the cul-de-sac where his Parisian studio was located. Upon his death in 1962, Emilienne bequeathed a generous legacy to the Musée des Beaux-arts in Nice, her birth town. The legacy included the magnificent Casino de la jetée-promenade aux deux calèches à Nice, dated 1927, as well as a series of Chinese ink drawings with a carnival theme, in a collection encompassing close to 200 pieces by the artist.

For the first time, the exhibition brings together almost one hundred oil, gouache and watercolour paintings as well as drawings and prints from public and private collections around the world, adding them to the Nice legacy in an event that explores how this city, its light, its bay, its traditions and its architecture influenced this body of work, and pays tribute to Raoul Dufy's crucial place in the landscape of 20th century art.