Get swept up in the glitz and glamour of the French Riviera as author and filmmaker John Baxter takes readers on a whirlwind tour through the star-studded cultural history of the Côte d’Azur that’s sure to delight travelers, Francophiles, and culture lovers alike. Readers will discover the dramatic lives of the legendary artists, writers, actors, and politicians who frequented the world’s most luxurious resort during its golden age. In 25 vivid chapters, Baxter introduces the iconic figures indelibly linked to the South of France—artist Henri Matisse, writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, Coco Chanel, and many more. Along the way, Baxter takes readers where few people ever get to go: the alluring world of the perfume industry, into the cars and casinos of Monte Carlo, behind-the-scenes at the Cannes Film Festival, to the villa where Picasso and Cocteau smoked opium, and to the hotel where Joseph Kennedy had an affair with Marlene Dietrich. These luminaries celebrated life and created art amid paradise and this book is the ultimate guide to the Riviera’s golden age. "These luminaries celebrated life and created art amid paradise and this book is the ultimate guide to the Riviera’s golden age." —Christine Gray, luxurytravelmagazine.com "As with all Museyon guidebooks, the volume is richly illustrated: The back matter alone features an art gallery of the French Riviera and its artists, but paintings are interspersed throughout the book." —June Sawyers,  Chicago Tribune "This is a pretty little book . . . it's an excellent resource for planning a trip or fantasizing about one, full of enticing descriptions, glamorous people and gossipy anecdotes." ——Sara Caterall, Shelf Awareness John Baxter is an Australian writer, journalist, and filmmaker. He is the author of Chronicles of Old Paris , The Golden Moments of Paris, Immoveable Feast: A Paris Christmas, The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris , and We’ll Always Have Paris: Sex and Love in the City of Light . French Riviera and Its Artists Art, Literature, Love, and Life on the Côte d'Azur By John Baxter Museyon, Inc. Copyright © 2015 John Baxter All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-940842-05-9 Contents INTRO THE SKY-BLUE COAST, CHAPTER 1. OF TIME AND LIGHT: The Rational Eye of Paul Cézanne, CHAPTER 2. PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR: Naked Among the Olives, CHAPTER 3. HENRI MATISSE: The Brush and the Blades, CHAPTER 4. DYING TO WRITE: D.H. Lawrence and the Literary Invalids, CHAPTER 5. FRANK HARRIS: A Life of Love and Lies, CHAPTER 6. TRAVELING HOPEFULLY: The Blue Train, CHAPTER 7. COCO CHANEL: The Inventor of Everything, CHAPTER 8. TO DANCE AND DIE: Ballet on the Riviera, CHAPTER 9. MANY FÊTES: The Hôtel du Cap and Tender Is the Night, CHAPTER 10. VILLA NOAILLES: Cement, Celluloid and Surrealism, CHAPTER 11. PIERRE BONNARD: Always Afternoon, CHAPTER 12. BRITONS BEHAVING BADLY: Somerset and all the Maughams, CHAPTER 13. PABLO PICASSO: In a Season of Calm Weather, CHAPTER 14. "THE WALLS SPEAK FOR ME": Jean Cocteau and the Villa Santo-Sospir, CHAPTER 15. MARC CHAGALL: An Angel in His Head, CHAPTER 16. AND ST. TROPEZ WAS CREATED: The Rise and Further Rise of Brigitte Bardot, CHAPTER 17. GRAHAM GREENE: The Dangerous Edge, CHAPTER 18. MONTE CARLO: A Sunny Place for Shady People, CHAPTER 19. TO CATCH A THIEF: Crime in the Sun, CHAPTER 20. FOLLOWING THE SUN: The Victorine Studios, CHAPTER 21. RED CARPETS AND GOLDEN PALMS: The Cannes Film Festival, MAPS, TIMELINE, ART GALLERY, LIST OF SITES, INDEX, CHAPTER 1 OF TIME AND LIGHT: The Rational Eye of Paul Cézanne Superficially, neither Paul Cézanne himself — dour, black-bearded, reclusive, and often rude, shy, angry or depressed — nor his expressionless portraits and meticulously assembled landscapes, subdued, precise but empty of people, had much in common with the sunny and hedonistic Riviera. Reflecting this, the brief time he spent there was at L'Estaque, the same semi-industrial town near Marseille where Georges Braque, no more cheerful than Cézanne, would later attempt, with little success, to contain the colors and light of the Mediterranean within the chilly mathematics of Cubism. And yet it is Cézanne to whom almost every later artist of the Riviera paid tribute as "the father of us all." Where Impressionism had freed the painter's brush, making it a tool of the imagination, responsive to the spirit of the moment, Cézanne demanded that the artist suppress this spontaneity. His own best example, he would spend hours contemplating an apparently simple rock or tree before committing a single brushstroke to canvas. Inspired by such old masters as Peter Paul Rubens, he studied each subject until he understood its topological form. Looked at analytically, a tree was essentially a cylinder, an apple or a human head both spheres, a range of hills no more than an arrangement of pyramids and cones. To Cézanne, a devout Catholic, this underlying unity proved the