Autumn in London is a good time to be reminded that somewhere, the sky is permanently blue. Painting the French Riviera opens in the Main Galleries at Burlington House on 2 October and runs through 31 January 2027, and it makes a persuasive case for spending the darkest months of the year in the Mediterranean light.
It tells a story you probably only know in fragments. Most of us have met the Riviera one painter at a time: a Matisse here, a Picasso there. This show puts them in one narrative, starting in the 1870s, when artists, writers, and aristocrats began leaving their grey, crowded industrial cities for the south coast. What they found there changed painting. The exhibition follows how that light and colour pushed the Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, and Modernists in new directions, and the cast is a big one: Monet, Cézanne, Renoir, Braque, Derain, Matisse, Picasso, and Yves Klein, among others.
The artists’ own words set the tone. Monet described the place as swimming in blue air. Braque called it a joyful revelation. Derain compared its blues to sticks of dynamite primed to discharge light. These are painters trying to describe a sensation, and the show seems built to let you feel what they were reaching for.
It goes beyond painting. With more than 160 works dating from the 1870s to the 1960s, the exhibition includes sculpture, travel posters, and film. That range lets it follow the Riviera’s second life, when a landscape that fed modern art turned into a holiday destination and a film location, and into shorthand for midcentury glamour. You see the myth being made and then sold back to everyone else.
It’s a good excuse to linger. The RA is offering a drinks and coffee deal for exhibition visitors and Friends on Fridays and Saturdays, so you can toast the Riviera after you’ve seen it.
The exhibition is organised by the Royal Academy of Arts in collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art.