Guys like Cezanne or Guys like Gauguin?

Last week I went to see the Royal Academy exhibition Painting the French Riviera. There is no doubt the highlights of the exhibition were the paintings by Paul Cezanne and Henri Matisse but there are many other big names who painted in the South of France at the turn of the last century who are featured including Claude Monet, Pierre Bonnard, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Signac, Andre Derain and Georges Braque.

What most intrigued me however was the arrival of artists to the area in the 1920s. The program to the exhibition explains:

In response to the devestation of the First World War, the Cote d’Azur became emblematic of hope and renewal…. The summer season on the French Riviera was now popularised by the ‘Lost Generation’ - the cohort who came of age during or immediately after the war – who flocked to the region to enjoy the bohemian, sun-soaked lifestyle. The Riviera was transformed into a glamorous playground for artists, writers and American expatriates seeking to escape Prohibition.

F Scot Fitzgerald is the only writer mentioned by name and in truth most of the American writers, such as Ernest Hemmingway, Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound were living in Paris, but spent their holidays in the South of France. That said there are plenty of painters in the exhibition who arrived in the South of France during and after the war. Most notably Pablo Picasso and the return of Matisse but also Raoul Dufy from Normandy, Finnish-born Leopold Survage, Ukrainian Alexander Archipenko, Chaim Soutine from today’s Belarus, Russian-born Marc Chagall, Scottish painter John Duncan Fergusson and African-American William H. Johnson.

I confess I hadn’t heard of all of these but it is perhaps no surprise so many painters, inspired by the great Impressionists and Fauvists should wish to visit the South of France and try to capture ‘a place where the sea and sky were azure and the sunshine endless’. These were guys like Cezanne, seeking to grow as artists and to learn their trade in situ. They were not looking to copy the painters who had become before them but instead to develop their own style, albeit in the same location.

I cannot help but see the parellels between these artists and those I have written about in my book Guys like Gauguin. Paul Gauguin’s work is synonymous with Tahiti and for many of the artists who settled on the island in the 1920s his work was an inspiration. However they were not looking to copy his work but instead, like the artists in the RA exhibition, they were looking to seek inspiration from the location.

One of the first to arrive was the American George Biddle who having served in France during the war chose to live in Tahiti for a few years to try and escape modern civilisation.  But his real aim was to develop as an artist and for him the joy of painting in Tahiti was ‘the instinctive, unreasoned, magnetic pull of the tropics. Lush vegetation, brilliant coloring, dark skins. The formalized, suggestive, yet deceptive beauty of primitive races.’ Jerome Blum, an acquaintance of Biddle’s, was also drawn by the colours of the tropics allowing him to produce paintings ‘vibrant with light and colour.’

Jerome Blum, Tahiti

The Scottish watercolourist William Alister Macdonald had not planned to settle on Tahiti when he left his wife and ran away with Dorothy, a woman half his age. However when they called in on the island in 1921, on their way to New Zealand, he quickly realised that the wonderful light and beautiful locations made it the perfect location to continue painting watercolours. Although Dorothy lasted just two years Macdonald stayed for 13 years.

William Alister Macdonald, View of Moorea

The Dutch artist Herman Gouwe, who had made his name painting wonderful rural landscapes, often featuring a horse and plough, felt trapped in Holland, not least thanks to a contract with his wealthy patron that meant the collector had the rights to all his future paintings. In 1927 he actually visited the South of France but quickly escaped from there to Tahiti and then on to the nearby island of Raiatea, where he lived a very simple life. It took him a while to feel confident enough to start experimenting with bright colours but in the 1930s he started to produce bold, bright intensely lit canvases.

Adriaan Herman Gouwe, Palm tree in Tahiti

Paul Engdahl, a member of Swedish National Romanticism movement left Europe after the war travelling first to Canada before moving on to Tahiti. Initially he painted landscapes with stylised figures before he came preoccupied with traditional Polynesian arts. After studying the symbols used by tattooists and wood carvers he started to produce pāreus (Tahitian sarongs) creating designs inspired by these symbols.

Paul Engdahl, Tahiti

Robert Lee Eskridge had had some success as a muralist working in Chicago when he first visited Tahiti. Heavily influenced by the Art Deco movement he spent much of his time in Tahiti trying to capture images of the traditional everyday life of the local people. He later spent almost a year travelling to and spending time on the remote Gambier Island of Manga Reva coming back with some wonderful paintings and drawings that he used to illustrate his book of the journey.

Robert Lee Eskridge, Portrait of Princess Ina

These are not the only painters who visited, or settled on, Tahiti and the nearby islands in the 1920s. One day I hope it will be possible to have an exhibition like Painting the French Riviera featuring all the men and women who painted in Tahiti but until then I can strongly recommend the RA’s one.

Painting the French Riviera, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2^nd October 2026 - 31^st January 2027.

Guys like Gauguin, Simon Keable-Elliott, (Troubador, 2026)