Our events are recorded and on-demand to ticket holders for one month. Proceeds from ticket sales benefit UK museums, galleries and other arts-based organisations.
Henri Matisse, Interior at Nice, c. 1919. Saint Louis Art Museum.
To Monet, it was like "swimming in blue air." To Braque, a "joyful revelation." Derain compared its cerulean hues to "sticks of dynamite….primed to discharge light."
Join exhibition curator Ann Dumas as she draws on works in the Royal Academy’s upcoming major exhibition Painting the French Riviera, to reveal how the Côte d'Azur dazzled modern art's great innovators.
The radiance of the French Riviera left an indelible mark on artists. It roused the imaginations not only of the 19th and 20th centuries' greatest painters – including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Yves Klein – but also giants of literature, cinema and fashion, whose works helped define the carefree glamour and eternal romance of the Côte d'Azur.
From the 1870s, the azure seas and sapphire skies of the French Riviera beckoned artists, writers, intellectuals and aristocrats searching for an escape from their drab and crowded industrial cities. Dumas discusses how this Mediterranean paradise captivated the modern imagination, and how its light, colour and beauty propelled successive generations of artists to new creative heights.
Painting the French Riviera is at the Royal Academy of Arts from 2 October 2026 to 31 January 2027.
This is an online event hosted on Zoom which can be watched live with Q&A, or on-demand for one month afterwards. You will receive your link to access the event in your email confirmation and the on-demand link after the event ends.