Cagnes, French Riviera

Augusta Payne Rathbone

While in Paris in 1927, Augusta Rathbone was introduced to printmaking and thereafter worked primarily in color aquatint combined with line etching. Rathbone, who had studied briefly with Bonnard, uses a freely drawn black etched line to capture rough shapes which are then filled with color, using aquatint. She worked with Monsieur Porcabeuf, a professional printer in Paris, who would prove her prepared plates. In the 1930s she traveled the French Riviera and her color palette adapted to the colorful villages throughout the region.

Rathbone produced twenty color aquatints of the French Riviera and about 1938 she joined forces with Juliet and Virginia Thompson to create the illustrated book French Riviera Villages, which was published that year by Mitchell Kennerly. Twelve of Rathbone's original color aquatints were reproduced mechanically by photography and then hand colored with pochoir. Juliet Thompson photographed the villages and Virginia Thompson wrote a history on each village. Rathbone's aquatints are a modernist homage to these ancient villages.

The town of Cagnes is located in the Alpes-Maritmes, in the Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region in southeastern France. It was the retreat and final address of the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir who moved there in 1907 in an attempt to improve his arthritis, and remained until his death in 1919. It is also home to the only horse hippodrome in the French Riviera, which draws people from all over for its horse races.