The town’s harbour first featured in the work of Joseph Loubon (1809–1863) in 1844 and in 1880 Johan Barthold Jongkind (1819–1891) made a visit to the town. He was born in the Netherlands but moved to Paris to study at the heart of artistic innovation in mid-nineteenth century Europe. He was soon rubbing shoulders with young painters such as Monet, Boudin and Sisley on whom he was a great influence. The essential qualities of Impressionism are evident in his work although he declined to exhibit with them. The picture shown is La Ciotat (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam). Although the town and seafront are much developed since he painted the scene the distinctive profile of the cliffs and the offshore Île Verte remain unchanged.

La Ciotat is only a short distance along the coast travelling eastwards from Cassis which is explored in depth elsewhere on this site. There, artists were inspired to create innovative work in the wake of the new thinking and practice of the Impressionists, notably by the Neo-impressionist Paul Signac. A little later the Fauves arrived and it was two of their number, Georges Braque and Othon Friesz, who ventured on to discover La Ciotat in 1907. It was the untamed coast and countryside that entranced this dynamic duo. They were both originally from the northern port of Le Havre and so no strangers to coastal subjects, but what a revelation this wild and exotic landscape must have been.

Othon Friesz (1879–1949) and Georges Braque (1882–1963) had become firm friends and enthusiastic members of the Fauve fraternity. The movement had been spawned from the work of Henri Matisse and André Derain in a summer of experimentation at Collioure in 1905 (see elsewhere on this site). In 1907 Friesz and Braque were on an artistic odyssey along the south coast of France, starting in L’Estaque, continuing in Cassis and then La Ciotat. In this brief interlude free rein was given to their imaginations, resulting in a joyful collection of work exploring non-representational colour and form which pushed the boundaries of painting towards abstraction.

For Friesz this was as far towards abstraction as he was willing to go and after 1907 he returned to Normandy and a more traditional style of painting that was more relevant to his personal goals. He opened his own studio in 1912 and taught until 1914 when he joined the army for the duration of the war. He lived in Paris from 1919 until his death in 1949 and is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse. The painting shown is La Ciotat of 1907 (Private collection).

Unlike his friend, Braque continued to be inspired by the ‘South’ but his direction of development took him away from Fauvism and in collaboration with Pablo Picasso he became a leading figure in the Cubist movement in the years before the First World War. The co-operation between these two giants of twentieth century art made a unique contribution to art history and as Braque himself said: ‘The things that Picasso and I said to one another during those years will never be said again, and even if they were, no one would understand them anymore. It was like being roped together on a mountain.’ After enlisting in the French Army he suffered a serious head injury which required a long period of recuperation. Painting remained a passion for the rest of his life which was spent, like Friesz, in Normandy. Still life and figure work became his focus rather than landscape and, unlike Picasso, Cubism continued to permeate his work. He died in 1963 and he is widely regarded as an elder statesman of modern art. The painting shown is Paysage à La Ciotat (MoMA, New York).

Where Friesz and Braque led others inevitably followed. The English painter and critic Roger Fry (1866–1934) was a leading member of the Bloomsbury Group and he visited La Ciotat as early as 1915 and in the years after the First World War nearby Cassis became a favoured destination. Perhaps it was on a jolly outing with other members of the group in 1923 that he made the spectacular journey along the Route des Crêtes across Cap Canaille taking in the magnificent views from the highest sea cliffs in France – a memorable experience to this day. The painting shown is Mediterranean Port, La Ciotat 1915 (Charleston, East Sussex, England).

Georges Valmier (1885–1837) spent most of his life in Paris and was witness to many of the sysmic art movements of the early twentieth century. His work reflected the influences of Impressionism and Cubism and his later work embraced Abstraction. He was multi-talented and he designed sets and costumes for theatre and ballet, created fabric designs and was a gifted musician. The painting shown is Paysage, La Ciotat 1922 (Private collection).

Jozef Pankiewicz (1866–1940) was a Polish artist who trained in St. Petersburg and then Paris in 1889. It was here that he was exposed to the paintings of the Barbizon School, the Impressionists and Post-impressionists and they were to be lasting influences on his work. He returned to Poland in 1897 and became an established figure in the art world and a respected teacher. He continued to travel extensively around Europe and between 1925 and 1937 he was head of the Paris branch of the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts. The South of France became a favourite destination for painting expeditions and he finally settled in La Ciotat in 1939 and it was here that he died the following year. The painting shown is Paysage, La Ciotat 1927 (Muzeum Narodowe, Warsaw, Poland).

Arthur Segal (1875–1944) was born to Jewish parents in Romania and studied in Berlin, Munich, Paris and Italy. He eventually returned to Berlin in 1904 and exhibited work alongside leading German Expressionists of the Die Brucke and Der Blaue Reiter groups. During the First World War he found refuge in Switzerland but returned to Germany in the 1920’s. Because of his Jewish background he found it difficult to exhibit and in 1933 he moved to Palma Majorca and then London. His style is a unique fusion of various influences including neo-impressionism, expressionism and dadaism. The painting shown is Hafen, La Ciotat of 1929 (Private collection).

Often referred to as the American Renoir, William James Glackens (1870–1938) was one of the founders of the Ashcan School and the group known as The Eight, characterised by gritty realistic depictions of urban life – a far cry from the work of the French master of Impressionism. In 1895 he travelled to Europe and spent a year in Paris immersed in the hothouse of artistic life and for the rest of his life he would be a committed Francophile making frequent visits to Paris and the South of France. It was later in his career that he adopted a brighter palette and that led to comparison with Renoir, not always complimentary in nature. The painting shown is Bowlers, La Ciotat, 1930 (Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale).

The early 1950’s were the most productive years for Nicolas de Staël (1913–1955) but would end with his tragic suicide. His work has been reviewed in the entry for Antibes elsewhere on this site but it was at La Ciotat that his non-figurative approach started to adopt references from the real landscape. Although the paintings he created of La Ciotat can be seen as almost abstract arrangements of colour it is likely that the studies upon which they are based were made directly from nature. The painting shown is Etude de Paysage, 1952 (Tate Collection, London).