19 – 24 March 2019
With a sea so blue it inspired its own patented shade (International Klein Blue), and a light so white it captivated Matisse for life, Nice is ever the paradise for art lovers. The French Riviera, an aristocrats’ playground in the eighteenth century, flourished artistically during la belle Époque and went on to be immortalized in all its glittery hedonism by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway. But the Côte d’Azur’s greatest legacy is the art of its residents: Picasso in his temporary studio at Château Grimaldi, perched above picturesque Antibes; Léger whose time in Biot culminated in a museum in the hills with paintings, ceramics and mosaics; Cocteau who came to a friend’s Villa Santo Sospir for dinner and left over a decade later; Chagall, one of the greatest colourists of his age, at the Colombe d’Or in the idyllic village of Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Then there are the grand designs. Matisse’s Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence, a distillation of his life’s work; rock dynamited at Cap Ferrat to build the sugar-pink Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild with its fabulous display of Gobelins tapestries, Fragonards, and Sèvres porcelain; art dealers Aimé and Marguerite Maeght creating an outdoor sculpture gallery to showcase the works of their friends Miró and Giacometti. Discover all this amid the spectacular scenery of Europe’s most glamorous coast.