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Disclaimer Although there had been an artistic tradition in the South of France, principally in Nice and Avignon, from the fourteenth century, there is no doubt that in the nineteenth century Paris was the crucible from which new ideas flowed in dizzying succession, transforming literature, music, philosophy and the visual arts. However, as landscape was one of the essential elements in the development of artistic ideas, painters had always spent time away from the capital. The coasts of Normandy and Brittany attracted many of the impressionists to work in the open-air and the countryside around Paris, now only a convenient train-ride away, provided the subject matter for many of their most important works. For many artists there was also a financial incentive to spend time away from the more expensive lifestyle of the capital.
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Cézanne, whose home town was Aix-en-Provence, always
ill-at-ease in the milieu of the Parisian art scene, returned frequently
to the south where the very different landscape provided the
inspiration to try new and radical ideas. He never tired of the grounds
of Jas de Bouffon, the family home, or Mont Sainte Victoire or the coast
at L’Éstaque as motifs for his work. Provence was where he spent most
of his time and created the body of innovative work that is widely
recognised as forming a bridge between the art of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. The painting shown is Le golfe de Marseilles vu de L’Estaque, painted in 1878–79 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris/
Van Gogh had embarked on his ill-fated
sojourn in Arles and although his ‘Studio of the South’ ended in a
disasterous falling-out with Gauguin and his mental state went into
severe decline, the paintings that resulted, with their vibrant colours
and animated brushwork, must have been a revelation to his
contemporaries and stretched the boundaries of Post-Impressionism.
Gauguin’s work at this time can be seen as a stepping stone between the
influence of the impressionists, with which he had become increasingly
disillusioned, and a more ‘symbolist’ style which he developed in Tahiti
and the South Seas. The painting shown is The Yellow House, painted in 1888 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam/
Monet stayed in Antibes for several months and was absorbed with capturing ‘pure, gentle sweetness ... surrounded by a fairylike air’,
and the canvases he produced seem to radiate light and colour. Renoir
found inspiration at L’Éstaque in the company of Cézanne and when his
health deteriorated with the effects of rheumatism he moved to Le
Domaine des Collettes in Haut-de-Cagnes, close to Nice, where he spent
the rest of his life. The painting shows Antibes, painted in 1888 (Courtauld Gallery, London/ 
In the
far west the quiet fishing harbour of Collioure was the unlikely venue
for another radical departure in artistic endeavour. It was here that
Henri Matisse and André Derain spent several months in 1905 developing
post-impressionist thinking in a new direction characterised by the use
of vibrant, non-representative colour in an exciting and even ‘wild’
manner. It was from this ‘wild’ aspect of their work that the Fauvist
movement was born – a short-lived explosion of light and colour in the
history of twentieth century painting. The work shown is View of Collioure by Matisse, from 1905 (The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg/ 
Other
Fauves including Marquet, Manguin, Camoin,
Dufy and Friesz all painted at various locations along the coast
including Martigues, L’Éstaque, Marseille, Cassis and Saint-Tropez.
George Braque who, together with Pablo Picasso, went on to be
influential in the development of Cubism was also a regular visitor to
the area. The painting shown is Road near L’Estaque, 1908, by Braque (Museum of Modern Art, New York/
