Azure dreams

Words: Anthea Gerrie

From Picasso’s home village to Chagall’s favourite breakfast café, a new tourist trail on the French Riviera guides visitors in the footsteps of art’s modern masters
With its brilliant light, palm-fringed beaches and exquisite villages ­ not to mention the hedonistic atmosphere generated by 80 years’ service as a playground to international stars ­ it’s no wonder so many great artists have been drawn to the French Riviera. Renoir and Monet were among the early troops, followed by Picasso, Matisse, Chagall and a whole host of others, both amateur and professional.

Now, a Painters of the Côte d’Azur itinerary helps art-lovers follow their trail, starting in Antibes Juan-les-Pins, described by Graham Greene as “the only town on the Riviera that has known how to keep its soul”. Perhaps that’s because the charming yet frenetic little resort of Juan-les-Pins is balanced by the working town and harbour just a stroll round the headland from the beautiful pinede ­ pinewood ­ that spills onto Juan’s easternmost beaches.

Monet stayed at the Château de la Pinede for the first half of 1888, painting 36 canvasses in Antibes. Picasso and Matisse followed in the Roaring Twenties, just as the resort was being discovered by a slew of American writers such as Ernest Hemingway and F Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Bonnard, Chagall and the surrealist Man Ray were here, too.

Another key location is Saint-Paul de Vence, just 12 miles and less than a half-hour drive from Nice. You don’t have to be a culture vulture to enjoy its winding, colonnaded streets lined with cafés and galleries. This atmospheric village was home for 20 years to Chagall, among dozens of great modern artists celebrated at the nearby Maeght Foundation, a cornucopia of 20th-century art that is one of the region’s most important museums.

Not far away is Cagnes-sur-Mer, with its shrine to Renoir and Biot, which, as well as being the home of a museum dedicated to Fernand Léger, another great master of contemporary art, is packed with glass and jewellery workshops. Picasso-lovers will want to head west of Antibes (where the museum dedicated to him is currently closed for renovation) to Vallauris. Here, both the artist’s painting and pottery can be viewed and, nearby, his home village of Mougins, where his life is documented at an excellent museum of photography.

Several of the Riviera’s greatest art draws are located within Nice itself ­ museums dedicated to Matisse and Chagall and a temple of modern art whose collection includes Warhols and other American greats. Fans of Old Masters are catered for in the Musée des Beaux Arts, and there’s also a museum of naive art, packed with childish but charming folk paintings of people, places and animals.

PABLO PICASSO

After the artist’s death, his daughter Maya (by Marie-Therese Walter, who preceded Dora Marr) took over L’Atelier du Fournas, the ancient perfumery that had been Picasso’s workshop, and in 2003 it was transformed into a guest house, with each bedroom named for one of Picasso’s women. The artist’s studio in Antibes’ Château Grimaldi, which preceded his Vallauris days, has become a museum. It is currently closed for renovation but houses many fine paintings, drawings and ceramics from Picasso’s most fertile period.
Musée Magnelli

The artist discovered Antibes in 1935 with Dora Marr, his muse of a decade, who was the subject of his Weeping Woman paintings and an accomplished photographer at the heart of the Paris avant-garde. He returned a decade later with his new mistress, artist Françoise Gilot. Picasso’s Villa Antre de Minotaure became the scene of great acrimony after he and Gilot parted and their children, Paloma and Claude, were no longer so welcome after he married his final muse, Jacqueline Rogue. There are wonderful, intimate portraits of these years by his friend Andre Villers at Mougins’ Photography Museum.

From 1948 to 1955, Picasso made nearby Vallauris the base for his new passion ­ pottery. Many of his finest ceramics are exhibited at the town’s Magnelli Museum, while his 1943 work L’Homme au Mouton is installed in the market square facing the museum. Vallauris is also the home of Picasso’s two giant compositions La Guerre et la Paix (War and Peace).

Place de la Liberation, Vallauris +33 (0)4 93 64 15 05; www.musees-nationaux-alpesmaritimes.fr
Musée National Picasso La Guerre et la Paix, Place de la Liberation, Vallauris +33 (0)4 93 64 71 83; www.musees-nationaux-alpesmaritimes.fr

HENRI MATISSE

Matisse first discovered the Riviera in 1898 and moved to Nice in 1917 to recover from bronchitis. He was about to leave after experiencing a month of solid rain when the mistral wind blew in and he was captivated forever by the luminous light.

The Villa La Reve in Vence, where Matisse lived from 1943 to 1949, is now a charming guest house. It’s particularly popular with artists, who appreciate its exceptional view of the sea and the hills. Picasso and Bonnard also stayed here as Matisse’s houseguests.

Before leaving the town, the artist started designs for the Chapelle du Rosaire, complete with stainedglass windows, ceramics and sacred furniture. Consecrated in 1951, it can be found on the fittingly named Avenue Matisse.

Eagerly anticipated is the reopening of the Matisse Museum, Nice, this summer, which is located close to the Hotel Regina, the artist’s long-time home and studio, where he died in 1954.

Musée Matisse (scheduled reopening 1 June)
164 Avenue des Arenes de Cimiez, Nice +33 (0)4 93 81 08 08; www.musee-matisse-nice.org

MARC CHAGALL

Although he lived in Saint-Paul de Vence, the principal Riviera showcase for Chagall’s work is in Nice. Devoted to his sacred works, the Chagall Museum offers the largest public showing anywhere of his fabulously colourful and spiritual paintings.

The daily life of this whimsical Russianborn painter in his happy final decades is well documented. He often breakfasted in the Café de la Place in Saint-Paul-de-Vence and lunched at the famous Colombe d’Or restaurant, the town’s other big attraction. Too frail to take long walks through the steeply sloping village streets, he created a mosaic of Moses being found in the bullrushes for the cathedral in nearby Vence.

Not all the works Chagall bequeathed to his home town are contained within its major museum, the Maeght, which houses 9,000 significant modern artworks. You can also see a mosaic based on his favourite theme of joyful lovers flying high above the world, and the façade of Saint Paul’s primary school, for which Chagall created a mosaic of a young boy with a radiant smile.

Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall
Avenue Docteur Menard, Nice
+33 (0)4 93 53 87 20; www.musee-chagall.fr

The Maeght Foundation, Saint-Paul de Vence
Chemin des Collettes, Cagnes-sur-Mer +33 (0)4 93 20 61 07
+33 (0)4 93 32 81 63; www.fondation-maeght.com

AUGUSTE RENOIR

In 1907, when the busy crossroads of Cagnes-surMer was a little fishing port, Renoir bought the Domaine les Collettes, enchanted by its olive grove. He had painted the farmhouse and its grounds several times, and saved the property from a would-be purchaser who planned to raze the trees and set up a carnation farm instead. Renoir lived there till his death in 1919, and it remained in the family for another 40 years before being converted into a museum. Derain, Soutine and Modigliani were all said to have fallen in love with Cagnes, thanks largely to its spectacular panoramas.

Musée Renoir
Avenue Docteur Menard, Nice +33 (0)4 93 53 87 20; www.musee-chagall.fr

FERNAND LEGER

In July 1955, when the artist bought Le Mas St André in Biot, with enough land to house the monumental statues for which he was famous, he had no idea of creating a museum. Tragically, he died just a month later, and his widow and her new husband set up the museum, which opened in 1957, with the funds from his workshop.

The hotel-restaurant Les Arcades is another historic address in this medieval jewel of a village. Its owner often put up struggling artists in return for their canvasses.

YVES KLEIN

Klein is most famous for having created a blue so intense and pure that it was named after him. The artist actually copyrighted his invention, International Klein Blue, in the 1950s. Born in Nice in 1928, he died young and was buried in 1962 in the beautiful little village of La Colle-sur-Loup, which is famous for its galleries, antique and designer shops; one of the most famous is the showroom of Jaqueline Morabito on the rue Yves Klein.

The best place to see Klein’s work is in Nice’s modern art museum, which has a whole room devoted to his creations.
Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain

Promenade des Art, Nice +33 (0)4 97 13 42 01; www.mamac-nice.org A great place to enjoy Pop Art and American Abstraction as well as the work of the New French Realists and painters of the school of Nice, all housed in a spectacular building.

ALSO FOR ART-LOVERS:

• MUSEE DES BEAUX ARTS 33 AVENUE DES BAUMETTES, NICE +33 (0)4 92 15 28 28; www. musee-beaux-arts-nice.org Beautiful 19th-century building housing half a millennium’s worth of painting and sculpture dating back to the 15th century.
• MUSEE INTERNATIONAL D’ART NAIF ANATOLE JAKOVSKI SAINTE-HELENE, AVENUE DE FABRON, NICE +33 (0)4 93 71 78 33; www.nice.fr Naive art from the 18th century onwards.
• VILLA EPHRUSSI ST JEAN-CAP-FERRAT +33 (0)4 93 01 33 09; www.villa-ephrussi.com Magnificent seaside palazzo on the Riviera’s most exclusive peninsula. It has seven themed gardens decked like a cruise liner and is packed with Old Masters, sculptures and objets d’art.
• MUSEE HONORE FRAGONARD 23 BOULEVARD FRAGONARD, GRASSE +33 (0)4 97 05 58 00; www.museesdegrasse.com The perfect antidote to temples of modern art, this charming and intimate museum showcases the delicate paintings, drawings and engravings of the eponymous 18th-century artist and members of his talented family. Grasse is also home to the French perfume industry.
  

Photography: Museo Picasso, Barcelona, Spain, DACS/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library, Zintzmeyer, Getty Images, Succession Picasso/DACS, London
Photography: Succession H Matisse/DACS/The Bridgeman Art Library, Getty Images, Succession H Matisse/DACS 2007
Photography: Museum of the village of Biot Alpes Maritimes, France/Fernand Léger Museum, Bridgestone Museum of Art/Tokyo/The Bridgeman Archive, ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2007, Musee Renoir, Les Collettes, Cagnes-sur-Mer, France, Lauros/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library, Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld, Germany, DACS/Bridgeman Art Library, Getty Images, ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2007