
Biot, 1923
These trips were very sociable affairs, and the de Glehns were often joined by their friends, the engraver Donald McLaughlan and his wife Aileen, and their cousins, Bill and Alice James. Jane often whiled away her evenings producing exquisite drawings of the members of the party and of Wilfrid’s Monod cousins whom they visited. Eulalie Monod, a glass-blower, had married into one of the local families at Biôt providing the de Glehns with the opportunity to visit one of the precariously balanced, medieval hillside towns that enticed them from the coast as the Riviera began to fill up with tourists. It was these inland towns, particularly those of the Var Valley just above Nice, which proved of lasting interest to the couple. Those that appear in their landscapes with greatest frequency are Carros, Gattières, La Gaude and St Paul.
A letter home from Wilfrid to his niece in 1926 gives us a taste of the happy days that Jane and Wilfrid spent together in this landscape that they had both come to love:
We are having a lovely time working every afternoon at La Gaude looking onto Gattières and the Var Valley. We are lunching with Sharlie and Luce…and coming back in time for dinner. It is glorious up there—like Claude Lorrains and Corots—marvellous classical landscapes.
Golden Shadows, Carros, watercolour
Pins Parasols, watercolour
St Paul, Vallée du Var, Alpes Maritimes



















