Painting the French Riviera

Painting the French Riviera is open at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, running from 2 October 2026 to 31 January 2027 in the Main Galleries at Burlington House. It's a big one: more than 160 works by some of the biggest names in modern art, spanning the 1870s to the 1960s. You'll find Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, Pierre Bonnard, André Derain, Paul Signac, Yves Klein and Nicolas de Staël all in the same show.

The whole thing is built around the Côte d'Azur and how it pulled in the innovators of modern art. The artists themselves put it in their own words: Monet described it as 'swimming in blue air', Braque called it a 'joyful revelation', and Derain compared the cerulean hues to 'sticks of dynamite... primed to discharge light'. From the 1870s, the azure seas and sapphire skies drew artists, writers, intellectuals and aristocrats escaping the drab industrial cities of northern Europe, pushing Impressionists, Post-Impressionists and Modernists to new heights.

By the 1920s, the region's image of sunbathing and glamour was driven by wealthy Americans like Gerald and Sara Murphy, who welcomed guests including Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Igor Stravinsky. The exhibition follows that shift from the early light-filled landscapes to the high-society scene of the interwar years, so you get to see the Riviera as both a painter's retreat and a social hub.

Tickets are £24-£26, or £26.50-£28.60 if you include a donation; Friends of the RA go free. After its London run, the show moves to the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio, where it runs from 14 March to 11 July 2027.