The exhibition will be on display from the 2nd October until the 31st January 2027.
McNay Art Museum, Bequest of Marion Koogler McNay, 1950.38
This October The Royal Academy of Arts will present an exhibition exploring the rise and development of modern art on the Mediterranean coast of France from the 1870s to the 1960s.
Painting the French Riviera will bring together over 120 paintings, sculptures and drawings, as well as film, books and travel posters to explore how artists including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Yves Klein found inspiration in the South of France.
Featuring work from across nearly 90 years, the exhibition will trace the transformation of the Mediterranean coast into one of the defining landscapes of modern art. It will concentrate on key moments and figures that made significant contributions to the history of modern art.
Works by Cézanne, Renoir and Morisot will explore this early fascination with the region, while a dedicated gallery will focus 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.
In addition, the exhibition will feature works by the Neo-Impressionists Paul Signac, Henri-Edmond Cross and Théo van Rysselberghe, with another section exploring the Fauves, led by Matisse and including André Derain and Georges Braque, who between 1905 and 1908 revolutionised painting through their complete liberation of colour for expressive purposes.
Pierre Bonnard will also feature significantly in the show, with a 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).
Among the works by Picasso on display will be Still Life with Mandolin, 1924 revealing 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 (Musée Picasso, Paris).
There will also be 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 will situate the Riviera in a wider cultural context. The exhibition will conclude with works by Nicolas de Staël and Yves Klein, whose abstract evocations of sea, sky and colour, including De Staël’s Le Fort-carré d’Antibes, 1955 and Klein’s ANT 84, 1960 (Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain distilled the Mediterranean into its most
elemental forms, offering a powerful culmination to this story of artistic invention and reinvention.
To book tickets visit: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/painting-the-french-riviera