The RA’s triumphant new exhibition
From our UK edition
What a show at the Royal Academy. You go straight into a room of Cézannes and Renoirs and that is how it continues, with one coup de théâtre after another, at the hands of Monet, Signac, Braque, Matisse, Derain, Bonnard and more, all of them in thrall to the astonishing light and colour of the Côte d’Azur. The completion of the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée railway suddenly made this spectacular seaside accessible It hadn’t always been like that. These artists, Cézanne excepted, came from northern France and knew nothing about the southern coast. What changed it all was the completion of the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée railway in 1860, which suddenly made this spectacular seaside accessible. Cézanne was from neighbouring Provence, and he arrived on the coast before anyone else.
