"The grand object of travelling," said Samuel Johnson, "is to see the shores of the Mediterranean." The maxim had a special force among artists from the early 1900s to the eve of World War II. It applied to one particular shore: the Cote d'Azur, that strip of Provence that runs from Nice to Hyeres. If ever a littoral was changed from a place to an idea by the efforts of painters, this one was it. Paul Cezanne, a Provencal rooted in the limestone and red clay of his native Aix, had made backcountry Provence around Mont Ste.-Victoire one of the sacred...
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