Painting the French Riviera - Royal Academy of Arts - London
Painting the French Riviera tells the story of how the Côte d'Azur captivated the great innovators of modern art. Its radiant light left a lasting mark on the leading painters of the 19th and 20th centuries – among them Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne, Renoir and Klein – as well as on writers, filmmakers and fashion designers, whose work shaped the glamour and romance still associated with the coast.
From the 1870s onwards, the deep blue sea and clear skies of the Riviera drew artists, writers, intellectuals and aristocrats looking to escape the grey, crowded industrial cities. There they found a landscape that pushed the Impressionists, Post-Impressionists and Modernists to new creative heights.
The exhibition explores how the Riviera nurtured the rise of modern art, and how it later became a travel destination and film location that came to define mid-century sophistication.
More than 160 works – paintings, sculpture, travel posters and film, from the 1870s to the 1960s – bring the story to life in the Main Galleries at Burlington House. The exhibition is organised by the Royal Academy of Arts in collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art. Go to Website
