French Riviera and Its Artists Art, Literature, Love, and Life on the Côte d'Azur by John Baxter

  French Riviera and Its Artists Art, Literature, Love, and Life on the Côte d'Azur 

by John Baxter is a new fatanstic book published by Museyon.

French Riviera has meant and is meaning a peaceful, enchanting place where spending good and long vacations also thanks to good weather, warm hospitality and that light, so special and unique. Matisse would have written: “When I realized that each morning I would see this

light again, I could not believe my luck.”

In the XVIII century from novelists to painters, creatives thought that the best places where to set their masterpieces was the indoor, till at the moment in which Paul Cezanne native of Aix-en-Provençe decided to portraying the outside part of the world. It was a great success.

Inspired also by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau  artists started to research new environments, outside, for portraying their paintings; there was a consistent migration in this part of France. 

Indispensible to mention Van Gogh and Paul Gaugin, and then Henri Matisse that was shocked by the wonderful light seen in this corner of the world; Renoir was another estimator. Picasso would have been in the French Riviera only after the First World War and pandemic flu.

The love for this bucolic land wasn't completely unknown. In 1834 Lord Henry Peter Brougham, decided to afford to Italy, but an epidemic of cholera interrupted his trip in the Riviera. He was so fascinated by that land that he fell in love for it, deciding to buy a villa in the area. Thanks to this publicity a lot of his friends joined him. 

In the XIX ventury Cannes became the favorite place of Russian aristocracy and Guy de Maupassant ironically thought that the city of Cannes had acquired several titles considered the crown heads in the city.

Aldous Huxley, Edith Wharton, Michael Arlen and E. Phillips Oppenheim were also in love for the French Riviera.

The first decades of the XX century Americans, Russians, tended to spend just the winter-time in the Riviera, ending their vacation in May 15.

A new railways meant the arrival of new tourists; it was a big change, noticed also by Francis Scott who wrote at some point: "Lately it has become a summer resort of notable and fashionable people; a decade ago it was almost deserted after the English clientele went north in April.”

Cole and Linda Porter were the first couple who decided to spend with great joy their summer time in the Riviera. Their friends considered them eccentric, but they really enjoyed every second of their time spent there.

The story of Cezanne is articulated. His family was a good one but they didn't encourage the artist, so Paul left for Paris where he failed, returned home, worked in a bank and was soon in the capital again because encouraged by Emile Zola.

As most people grown up in little places, Paul Cezanne remarked in a letter: "When I was in Aix, from Paris, it seemed to me that I would be better elsewhere, but now that I am here, I miss Aix.  When one is born there, he is ruined; nothing else means

anything to you.” They're absolutely healthy feelings of people born in beautiful places.

One day Renoir was his guest for several days at L'Estaque and they painted both the same scenario. Renoir remains the gentle soul painting with grace the reality; Cezanne is more hard in his characterization of the scenario.

Renoir was another estimator of the South of France because of his many problems with bones; if in the youth had visited Italy and Africa, for helping his body in the latest part of his life choose the South of France.

When afforded in the French Riviera Renoir was an old man; accompanied by his wife and many servants, he loved to surround himself by sexuality that found thanks to the young models he used for painting.

In the Riviera Renoir spent only the coldest months of the year, but the first world war blocked him per years there.

He returned to paris where he died  in 1919.

Matisse lived in traumatic times, and experiences and saw things, politically and ecologically that were devastating.

Helped by Gertrude Stein at coming out, devoted of his canvas, she had many canvas of this painter for sure! Stein was someone who helped everyone and every painters she believed in exposing every saturday in her apartment on Rue de Fleurus.

Matisse moved in South France, Nice in 1917.

It was a joy and a delight representing the light, beauty and sunny days of the place.

He had two passions: travelling and women.

He died, after years of sickness for a heart attack. 

A chapter is dedicated at the so-called Blue Train.

Sylvia Plath once said that it was the best way for travelling; this train interrupted its touristic function during the First Wolr War becoming a train for military purpose.

After the war and from 1922 to 1947 the Blue Train was a joy for the tourists.

It stopped at  Paris, Dijon, Marseille, Toulon, St. Raphaël, Cannes, Juan-les-Pins, Antibes, Nice, Monaco, Monte Carlo, and Menton.

Le Figaro wrote: “Going to sleep in a country of mist and grey skies, then waking up the next day to visions of light and sunny places where one breathes a fragrant air: this poetic dream can indeed come true if you take the new lightning-speed train that the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée company has just created, with Monte Carlo as its destination.”

Many the known people who reached their favorite locality with the Blue Train: Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, Sergei Diaghilev, Coco Chanel, Evelyn Waugh and W. Somerset Maugham.

It became a sort of Orient Express and this train interested also Agatha Christie, who wrote a book called The Mystery of the Blue Train.  

The same known and legendary coreographer Sergei Diaghilev  commissioned Le Blue Train a ballet written by Jean Cocteau, Coco Chanel designed the customs and Pablo Picasso treated the theatrical curtains.

After the Second Wolrd War the Blue Train didn't travel anymore.

Coco Chanel at first was also costum designer for theater and films.

In 1923 at 40 was known as a couturier and her first fragrance Chanel No. 5 was ready.

With her companion they chose a house in the Riviera. It was  an old

farm on Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.

It took a long time before that the farm was completely restored, but then her friends like Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso and Luchino

Visconti spent months with her.

Once she broke up with her companion the Duke of Westminster in 1932, Coco Chanel found a new dimension with new lovers and companions.

Fetes in the French Riviera, but also Ballet and Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteu, Riviera, Brigitte Bardot, and cinema, cinema, cinema, in a new book by John Baxter that it is a tripude of colors! No one, like Baxter is in grade of characterizing, representing like in a long and beautiful dream that years, with an enchantment, a joy that it is pure love for his adoptive land,  France.

I found not just relaxation in reading this book, but also an immense lightness. John Baxter enters in your heart with his unforgettable stories, for staying there forever.

Highly highly recommended, for dreaming, remembering, learning.

I thanbk Museyon for the copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori