Vintage Poster Archives
Domergue Nice Beuil 1928 | French Riviera Travel Poster
Domergue Nice Beuil 1928 | French Riviera Travel Poster
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A woman in a long burnt-orange fur coat stands at the vertical seam dividing snow from sea. To her left, a cream ski slope with 1920s skiers descending in loose dress; to her right, a flat cobalt Mediterranean with two bathers on a surfboard, the water rendered in vigorous parallel brushstrokes of deep blue and white. She is the argument the poster is making: that a single traveller, in a single season, can ski and swim the same day.
Designed by Jean-Gabriel Domergue (1889–1962) for the PLM railway, circa 1928, the poster promoted Beuil, the Alpes-Maritimes mountain village 78 kilometres north of Nice, as a winter destination within reach of the French Riviera. Beuil's Club de Sports d'Hiver had been founded in 1924, and by the late 1920s the PLM was commissioning artists to make the case for a dual-season Côte d'Azur. Domergue, who had won the gold medal at the 1920 Salon des Artistes Français and was already the portraitist of choice for Parisian society women, brought his characteristic elegance to a composition that uses a split background with unusual confidence: snow and sea, held together by one central figure.
The title lettering at the foot, 'NICE BEUIL' in condensed white capitals over a deep maroon band, 'SPORTS D'HIVER SUR LA COTE D'AZUR' in gold beneath, is the visual grammar of the PLM's best travel commissions of the period. Alongside Roger Broders, Domergue was one of the artists who defined how the Riviera sold itself to northern Europe in the 1920s and 1930s.
Reproduced from a restored archival source on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper. Available in multiple sizes, unframed and rolled.
