View of the climb to a church in old city of Nice (Vieux-Nice) was executed in 1898 by renowned French painter Enmanuel Costa ( Menton 1833 - 1921 Nice). 
 
The Masséna museum in Nice is offering its summer exhibition until September 17, 2023 on the theme: "Seeing the Riviera in painting, and beyond". This highlights the works of the painter Emmanuel Costa (1833-1921), known for his large painted decorations, sacred and profane.

In Paris he was a student of Jules-Jean Ferry and Paul Delaroche. Active in Nice and Turin, probably there. Professor of the ABA (according to Harambourg no stay in Turin). –  city views (also Aqu.), especially of Nice, Villefranche, Monaco, Menton and Maghreb/Morocco, where Costa presumably  traveled around 1890.

Emmanuel Costa was not only inspired by his native Riviera, from Estérel to Liguria, but also by other places such as Lyon, Paris, Lons-le-Saunier and even Madrid and Warsaw.
Born in 1833 in Menton, he experienced the years of the change of sovereignty of Nice, which became French in 1860. Like many of his contemporaries, he was torn between ancestral feelings for the house of Savoy, a keen interest in the unity Italian and the desire to live within the French State.

With his three sons, Emmanuel Costa has multiplied the interior decorations of several hotels in Nice and Monaco, of most of the performance halls of Nice such as the former Municipal Casino of Place Massena, the Cercle international de Nice, the Grand Hôtel de Nice, the Hotel de Paris in Monte-Carlo, etc. Of these immense decorations, we still have today the ceiling of the Opéra de Nice, typical of this academic art which is completely in keeping with the eclectic style of 19th century resort architecture.

Even more than by his religious and decorative works, the notoriety of Emmanuel Costa was first built around the landscapes of Nice and the coast that he never stopped painting in oil and especially in watercolor. . It is part of a long tradition of landscape painters-travellers who have worked on site and made the country of Nice known through original works and their reproductions in prints.

Works: Nice, Mus. Masséna. – MBA Jules Chéret.

Exhibitions:  1903 Nizza, MBA; Museum Massena, Nice, 1923.

Literature: artist lexicons by Benezit (in French) and Thieme/Becker (in German).

Inscription: signed lower right.

Technique: watercolour on paper, original matted and frame.

Measurements: unframed w 6 7/8“ x h 8 2/3” (26 x 42,5 cm), framed w 11 1/3” x h 13” (46 x 63,5 cm).

Condition: in very good condition.