French Riviera
Artful Riviera E
VERYBODY comments on it: there' s something about the light on the Côte d' Azur. Either that or there' s something in the water, because
artists and writers have flocked to the French Riviera to work since the late 1700s. Even the term Côte d' Azur was coined by
a writer, Stephen Liégeard, who called his 1887 travel book on the Riviera La Côte d' Azur. Liégeard, who described the area as a ` coast of light, of warm breezes, and mysterious balmy forests' , published the work during the Riviera' s golden era, when improved accessibility and news of the favourable local climate turned a relatively obscure piece of coastline into one of the most fashionable places in Europe. Since then, famous (and infamous) names have settled there to work, imbuing the area with the kind of creative credibility rarely found out- side the world' s largest cultural capitals. Almost every conurbation along the coast has a writer attached to it. They came here
Holly Kirkwood traces the footsteps of famous artists and writers to discover the most inspiring locations along the sun-drenched Côte d'Azur
to flee everything from Prohibition in America (F. Scott Fitzgerald spent much of the 1920s there with his wife, Zelda) to bad marriages (Somerset Maugham and H. G. Wells both escaped failing relation- ships there). British censors drove D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce out of the UK, and Berthold Brecht and Vladimir Nabokov had run from more despotic regimes.
` Since the 1700s, famous (and infamous) names have settled on the Riviera to work, imbuing the area with cultural credibility'
As a result, parts of the Riviera are now
immortalised in literature. Artists were also inspired, and captured the magic of the area in landscapes or echoed its colour palette throughout much of their wider work. From
O
Near Saint-Tropez In 1971, William Rubin, a director of MoMA in New York, travelled to Mougins on a mission
to persuade Picasso to swap his famous guitar sculpture for a Cezanne oil. In the end, Picasso agreed to donate his guitar to the museum and the men became firm friends. Rubin also fell in love with the Riviera and bought the hillside domaine of L' Oubradou. Set in about 12 acres of panoramic gardens with two swimming pools, L' Oubradou overlooks the village of Plan de la Tour, near Saint-Tropez. The property provides flexible accommodation, with more than 600sq m of living space laid out across two principal houses built from rustic stone sourced in local quarries. The guide price of l' Oubradou is €5.95 million through Lee & Legastelois (
www.lee-legastelois.com) and Winkworth (020± 8576 5582;
www.winkworth.co.uk).
46 Country Life International, Summer 2011
4Corners Images
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84