Painting Cap d'Antibes: How a 190cm Canvas Became a Journey

Every painting starts somewhere small. For Affectionate Farewell, Cap d'Antibes, France, it started with a postcard-size sketch I made while sitting on a rock at the tip of the Cap d'Antibes peninsula, watching the morning light move across the sea.

I didn't plan to make it large. But something about that particular quality of light — the way the Mediterranean wraps around the headland, the pine silhouettes against the haze — felt like it needed space to breathe. A postcard wasn't enough.

Why a panoramic format?

The Cape is experienced horizontally. You stand at the point and your eyes sweep left to right — Antibes to the east, the Esterel massif to the west, the deep blue in between. A square or vertical canvas would have cropped exactly the thing I was trying to keep.

The final dimensions are 190 × 45 cm — more than 4:1 ratio. This is an unusual format for oil on canvas, and it created practical challenges: stretching a canvas that wide without warping requires extra bracing, and the horizontal brushwork has to carry the eye across almost two metres of surface without losing momentum.

The palette

Southern French light has a particular quality in autumn. It's warm but not harsh — the sun is lower, and the shadows have colour in them. I worked with a limited palette: titanium white, cerulean blue, ultramarine, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, and a small amount of viridian for the pine needles.

The water went through four sessions. The first three felt wrong — too green, then too purple, then too grey. The final version was painted mostly in one sitting, wet-on-wet, which gave it the softness I was looking for.

What "affectionate farewell" means

I was leaving France the next day when I made the original sketch. There's always something bittersweet about the last morning somewhere beautiful — you look harder than you looked all week. The painting is an attempt to hold that look.

A painter's job is not to copy what's there, but to remember how it felt to be there.

This piece is available in my gallery. If you'd like to inquire about it, please contact me directly — I'm happy to answer questions about the work, shipping, or custom framing.