More than 160 works trace what the Côte d'Azur did to modern painting, in the Royal Academy's Main Galleries from 2 October 2026 to 31 January 2027.
The Royal Academy of Arts in Mayfair surveys more than a century of painters who worked on the Côte d’Azur, from Friday 2 October 2026 to Sunday 31 January 2027. More than 160 works follow the coast from the 1870s to the 1960s.
The coast was a malarial stretch of fishing villages until the railway reached it in the 1860s. Within forty years it had become the place European painting went to study light.
The coast faces south with mountains behind it, so the light arrives twice, direct and reflected off the sea. Shadows fill with blue instead of grey. Monet said the place swam in blue air, and Braque called it a joyful revelation.
Cézanne, Renoir, Matisse, Bonnard, Picasso and Yves Klein all worked there. Matisse painted his sunlit interiors at Nice, Maillol carved the nude he called La Méditerranée, and Klein pressed paint-dipped models onto canvas for the Anthropométries.
Posters and films are shown beside the paintings and sculptures, because the tourist industry and the painting sold each other. The Academy organised the exhibition with the Cleveland Museum of Art.
The show fills the Main Galleries through London’s darkest months.