In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century the lack of decent roads meant that those travelling along the Riviera preferred to sail, and artists took advantage of this to depict landscapes from the sea. As roads improved sailing became rarer, although some wealthy visitors, such as Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, built their own yachts for pleasure. Regular steamship travel became common from the 1840s. In the second half of the nineteenth century the harbours of Genoa and La Spezia became even more strategically important following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. By the end of the century paintings of sailors, fishing boats, women washing clothes on the beach and busy ports and harbours became one of the dominant and most popular genres.

Nowadays, when travelling by car or train from Nice in the west to the Cinque Terre in the east in the summer season, the seaward view consists of a succession of beaches covered with dense rows of deckchairs and umbrellas; sunbathers and swimmers. The old harbours and modern marinas are full of yachts. The tourism industry, largely based on the narrow coastal strip, dominates the local economy. This mass tourism of the Italian and French Rivieras was foreshadowed in the late nineteenth century by their development as a fashionable winter resort for wealthy Europeans and Americans. The term ‘Riviera’ – in English ‘sea shore’ or ‘coast’ – became synonymous with the search for pleasure and health. The physical landscapes, with dramatic cliffs and beaches, exotic vegetation and twisting corniche roads with fine views of the sea and coastline, were essential for the development of luxurious tourism (discussed in Chapter 9).

Views Of The Coast From The Sea

Accurate depictions of coastlines, including beaches, rocks, cliffs, settlements, lighthouses and ports and harbours, became increasingly important in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century with the rapid development of British naval power. Draughtsmanship was part of a naval officer’s training at the Naval Academy in Portsmouth from 1733 and Admiralty instructions specified that ‘where there shall be Artists on board sufficiently qualified, you are to add Drafts of Plans, for the better Illustration’ of enemy coasts and defences.