The Royal Academy’s newest exhibition explores the magnetic pull of the French Riviera on artists, featuring works by Kees van Dongen, Claude Monet, and Pablo Picasso. An elegant woman dressed in white poses on the sun-drenched Boulevard de la Croisette, her streamlined silhouette the height of fashion and a flash of red at her mouth suggesting refinement and seduction.
In the roughly sketched scene behind her, the sweeping lines of a yacht meet a row of luscious palms, while the curves of a yellow sports car dissolve into sparse brushstrokes hinting at a luxury hotel façade. This artwork, titled The White Lady, was created by the Dutch/French Fauvist Kees van Dongen and captures the glitz and glamour of Cannes, which by the 1920s had transformed from a genteel winter resort into a summer playground for the artistic, aristocratic, and moneyed American set.
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The Light That Drew Them In
The exhibition pays heed to the constellation of artists who became enraptured by the region’s glittering sea, lush vegetation, and astonishing natural light. Among the first were Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet, who made a life-altering coastal excursion together in 1883. Renoir was so taken with the rural simplicity of Cagnes-sur-Mer that he eventually settled there, although he built a more refined property next to his rustic farmhouse. His friend went on to make several solo expeditions, painting views of Bordighera over the border in Italy, Cap-Martin, and Antibes in what he called an act of ‘fencing, wrestling with the sun’. A gallery in the show is dedicated to his work from this period.
This obsession with the intensity of light carried through to Neo-Impressionists such as Paul Signac and Théo van Rysselberghe. Their Pointillist style was concerned with the illusionary qualities held in daubs of pure colour. In Signac’s Le Pin de Bertaud, for example, an elegant pine tree is illuminated as if on fire, and the mauve-hued haze reveals the outline of Saint-Tropez in the distance. The artist became captivated by the port town, then only accessible by boat, after he arrived there on his own small yacht Olympia in 1892, and would go on to gain the respect and favour of the local inhabitants.
Less intrepid, but no less enthusiastic transplants included Pierre Bonnard, who made his home in the town of Le Cannet and took in sea views, and Pablo Picasso, who sought tranquillity among the quiet streets of Antibes. In 1946 he took up a studio in Château Grimaldi, which is now a museum dedicated to the artist, and entered an industrious period using any materials he could get his hands on, including plywood and enamel paint. He went on to establish a studio inside a Belle Epoque villa in Cannes, where his monumental work The Bay of Cannes is a highlight of the Royal Academy show.
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Seasonal Escapes and Permanent Moves
While plenty of the artists featured focused on the outdoors, Henri Matisse explored both interior and exterior scenes. His wintertime visits saw him experiment with a motif recurrent in what is termed his ‘Nice period’, where the surroundings of his rooms at the Hôtel Beau Rivage, Hôtel de la Mediterranée, and later dwellings frame the luminous sea view beyond.
The magic of the coastline and the banality of everyday living converge on the canvas, anchored by the presence of a female model. Matisse fell in love with the city, writing in a letter of 1952: “When I realised that every morning I would see this light again, I could not describe my joy. I decided not to leave Nice, and I stayed there practically all my life.”
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For visitors walking through the exhibition, the physical presence of these works offers a tangible sense of how the geography and climate of the southern coast fundamentally altered the rhythm of daily life for its residents. The luminosity that captivated painters during their morning sketching sessions eventually became the backdrop for ordinary domestic scenes, meaning the light did not just illuminate the canvas but structured the hours of the day for those who chose to stay. The experience of seeing these interiors is to understand that the artists were not merely fleeing the north for a holiday, but were actively reshaping their environments to match the specific, unrepeatable qualities of the Mediterranean light.
Painting the French Riviera runs 2 October–31 January at the Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1. For more information, visit royalacademy.org.uk.
