With its romantic coastline, inviting beaches and reliable sunshine, southern France鈥檚 Riviera region has been a tourist destination since the 1860s. In the 1920s, aristocrats from London to Moscow flocked here to socialize, gamble and escape the dreary weather at home. But the area also attracted a Who鈥檚 Who of 20th-century artists, who were drawn by the Mediterranean鈥檚 bohemian atmosphere, luminous light and contrasting colours of sea, sand, and sky.
The legacies of the many artists who worked in the south 鈥� including Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy, Fernand L茅ger, and Pablo Picasso 鈥� are memorialized today in an intriguing collection of museums. And visiting them is easy, as none tend to be plagued by the long lines and crowds of major museums in Europe鈥檚 big cities (leaving you plenty of time for the beach). Here are some of my favourites:
Renoir Museum,
Cagnes-sur-Mer
In 1907, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, whose Impressionist paintings straddled the last turn of the century, built a house and workshop for himself in Cagnes-sur-Mer (halfway between Nice and Antibes). By then an old man, Renoir would spend his last 12 years in this little village happily tending his fruit trees, painting in his studio and dabbling in sculpture. You can see his atelier, with his easel and palette still in place (as well as his wheelchair and canes), and some original paintings.
Matisse Museum, Nice
Henri Matisse, the master colourist, first came to Nice in 1917, leaving behind financial struggles and a difficult marriage in Paris. He would remain in the Riviera, on and off, until his death in 1954. Though this museum鈥檚 collection is slender, you can see typical examples of a range of his favourite motifs (flowers, fruit, female nudes), as well as his love of decorative patterns and joyful colour.
Chagall Museum, Nice
Marc Chagall settled in the Riviera after the Second World War. His best-known paintings feature a magical-realist style that conjures up his native Russia, with fiddlers on roofs and horses in flight. Chagall had a hand in designing this delightful museum, which includes his Biblical Message cycle: 17 large luminous canvases on biblical themes, painted in bright reds, blues and greens that manage to combine aspects of his Russian-Jewish heritage with the Christian story.
Picasso Museum, Antibes
Pablo Picasso, the pioneer of Cubism, summered on the Riviera nearly every year from 1919 until he died in 1973. He had hunkered down in Paris for most of the Second World War, but in 1946, he returned to Antibes, on the coast, where he spent a productive part of a year working in the town鈥檚 landmark Ch芒teau Grimaldi. Forced to improvise his materials after the shortages of the war years, but elated by the newfound peace (and a new girlfriend), Picasso produced an amazing volume of celebratory, colourful artworks. The compact museum now housed in the Grimaldi offers a manageable look at the paintings and sketches Picasso made there.
Picasso Museum, Vallauris
After his sabbatical in Antibes, Picasso moved on to Vallauris, a typical Riviera village midway between Antibes and Cannes. The little town was home to several active art potteries, and Picasso became so enamoured by the ceramics he saw that he resolved to take up clay as a medium. He ended up staying in Vallauris until 1955, and the museum there is a good place to become acquainted with his playful approach to ceramic art.
Maeght Foundation,
St-Paul-de-Vence
This inviting, private museum, situated just above the inland town of St-Paul-de-Vence, offers an excellent introduction to modern Mediterranean art. Its founder, the Parisian art dealer Aim茅 Maeght, purchased an arid hilltop in the 1960s, planted it with 35,000 trees and shrubs and hired the Catalan architect Jos茅 Luis Sert to design a museum for his collection.
Today, it gathers under one roof the work of many famous modern artists (Fernand L茅ger, Joan Mir贸, Alexander Calder, Georges Braque, Marc Chagall). The lovely setting, with a verdant sculpture garden, is a bonus.
Chapel of the Rosary,
Vence
Matisse convalesced from cancer surgery in 1941 with the help of a Dominican nun, and years later, in 1949, he repaid the favour by designing this tiny chapel in the hills above Nice. Deceptively simple, the chapel is tiled in plain white, with a few black-on-white line drawings (one depicts St. Dominic). But yellow, green, and blue stained-glass windows filter the sunlight, creating a cheery dance across the walls 鈥� expressing Matisse鈥檚 irrepressible love of life. It鈥檚 a space of light and calm that only a master could have created.
Thanks to these diverse museums, the Riviera has a cultural richness that鈥檚 not typical of resort areas.
The collections reflect the congenial joie de vivre of southern France: the playfulness, freedom, colour, and beauty that inspires artists to this day.
Rick Steves (ricksteves.com) writes European travel guidebooks and hosts travel shows on public television and public radio. Email him at [email protected] and follow his blog on Facebook.
