View on the Cote d'Azur, Menton, 1916 (oil on canvas)

In 1915 Roger Fry stayed at Roquebrune near Menton, the subject of this view. This painting was presumably begun there and finished at home in 1916, as in that year he travelled no further than Paris. The pleasures of this landscape may be seen as a refuge from the scenes of war-time devastation Fry had just witnessed in the Marne and Meuse area. He wrote: ‘...went to see the Quaker relief work [which his sister Margery Fry was directing] ...then went south and painted. I find it’s the only thing to do. I’m no good at philanthropy...’ Fry was apparently encouraged to use this bright palette by the Belgian artist Jan Vanden Eeckhoudt, friend and neighbour of Fry’s hosts at Roquebrune, the painter Simon Bussy and his wife Dorothy Strachey. He wrote to Winifred Gill: ‘I know quite well whenever I get to this mediterranean country that I ought never to leave it. It all seems just right, the right kinds of colours and shapes everywhere.