The Mediterranean Charm: Why Writers and Painters Keep Coming Back to This Sea

On a tranquil Mentonnais weekend, two weeks before the midterms rush, I boarded a train bound for Antibes. As I wandered through its cobbled streets, the Mediterranean shimmered next to me, breathing light into every corner of the city; a scene not so different from that of my hometown in Alexandria, Egypt. Apparently, this feeling of familiarity with this vast blue sea is nothing new—a feeling shared by many people no matter on which shore one is standing. Back in Alexandria, when we used to drive along the Corniche, my father always spoke of how deeply he loved this sea, and I thought I already understood. But I only realized the depth of his feeling later, when I saw the words of Hugo, Fitzgerald, Matisse, Picasso and Monet scattered across Antibes' corners, showing the attachment they all had with the Mediterranean. Their words and brushstrokes still linger on the city’s walls, testament to an endless fascination of the Mediterranean and the solace it brings to their hearts and their arts.

I found myself wondering: what is it about this exact sea; what is really that mesmerizing about this luminous expanse binding continents and cultures, continuously calling artists back? From Mahmoud Darwish, Albert Camus and Mahmoud Saïd to Monet and Picasso, the Mediterranean has been both a muse and a mirror, reflecting the spirit of those who gaze upon it. So let us drift along its shores to see why its beauty has never ceased to inspire.

I’ll be biased and start with two of my personal favorite writers: Khalil Gibran and Mahmoud Darwish, two Levantines whose work was carried by the same Mediterranean wind.

The Lebanese-American poet Khalil Gibran found a wellspring of poetic and spiritual inspiration in the Mediterranean landscape of his native Lebanon. Themes of sea and nature prevailed in the seemingly Mediterranean setting of “The Prophet,” his best known work. For Gibran, the sea was not just a body of water, but a restless companion, mirroring the human soul’s search for meaning. In his poem “Revelation” from (Prose Poems, 1934), he writes, “The sea never sleeps and the wakefulness of the sea brings comfort to a sleepless soul.” For Gibran, the sea became a sacred metaphor and an ever-living symbol through which he expressed humanity’s ceaseless yearning for spirituality, looking to a landscape that seems infinite.

For Mahmoud Darwish, on the other hand, the water and the sea took on a more haunting symbolism. They were both a promise and a wound: a mirror of exile itself. To look at the sea was to remember a wounded present of migration, departure and displacement, but also to imagine a promised future: one of freedom and return. The strong link between the sea and exile was crystal clear in his poem “Without Exile, Who Am I?”

What will we do … what

will we do without exile, and a long night

that stares at the water?

Water

binds me

to your name ...

The Mediterranean sea forms a central metaphor in Darwish’s poetry, symbolizing both exile and the aspirations for Palestine’s rebirth. In his eyes, the endlessly rolling waves mirror the uncertain lives of Palestinians displaced from their home, while the horizon reflects the trauma of those unable to envision a future. In his prose poems “Memory for Forgetfulness” (1986), written after the poet’s forced departure from Beirut during the Israeli invasion of 1982, Darwish describes the sea simultaneously as a space of annihilation and potential creation. He states: 

“The sea walks in the streets. The sea hangs from the windows and the branches of dried out trees. The sea descends from the sky and enters the room. Blue.. White.. Foam.. Waves. I do not love the sea.. I do not want the sea, because I do not see a shore, or a dove. I do not see anything in the sea except the sea. I do not see a shore. I do not see a dove.”

As the Mediterranean floods the streets of Beirut, it represents not only the collapse of Arab unity and postcolonial dreams but also the primordial chaos from which new meaning can emerge.

Between Algiers and metropolitan France, Albert Camus’s thought was molded by the Mediterranean world that defined his life. Born in colonial Algeria to French parents, he inhabited the uneasy space between colony and metropole. From this tension and in-betweenness he forged what  he called the “Mediterranean spirit.”

For Camus, this spirit was not about geography but about the harmony of living in rhythm with the world’s beauty and absurdity. The Mediterranean and its simplicity offered him a moral compass, a refuge and a rhythm, a place where time slows and life is measured not by productivity, but by presence. 

The sea and the sun are fundamental motifs in his literary works, like “The Stranger.” Camus’ “Mediterranean spirit" was a conscious cultural and political stance.  In an article about this notion of a mediterranean spirit, the author states:

…Camus overcame his strangerhood by calling the entire Mediterranean his home – not France, not Algeria. “I understand what it means to belong to a climate, rather than a country: a home shaped by the sun, the sea and the play of light. That home is also mine.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, was an outsider to the Mediterranean, but nonetheless found himself enchanted by it. In 1926, he and his wife Zelda settled in Antibes, renting what is now the Hôtel Belles Rives, where he began writing “Tender Is the Night.”

In a 1926 letter to Hemingway, he wrote: “With our being back in a nice villa on my beloved Riviera… I’m happier than I’ve been for years. It’s one of those strange, precious and all too transitory moments when everything in one’s life seems to be going well.”

That joy, fragile and fleeting, lives on in his fiction, where the Mediterranean became a stage for both beauty and tragedy. In “How to Live on Practically Nothing a Year”, published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1942, Fitzgerald states: “When your eyes first fall upon the Mediterranean you know at once why it was here that man first stood erect and stretched out his arms toward the sun. It is a blue sea; or rather it is too blue for that hackneyed phrase which has described every muddy pool from pole to pole. It is the fairy blue of Maxfield Parrish’s pictures, blue like blue books, blue oil, blue eyes, and in the shadow of the mountains a green belt of land runs along the coast for a hundred miles and makes a playground for the world.”

From the page to the canvas, the Mediterranean also inspired painters. If Fitzgerald came to the Mediterranean seeking joy, Pablo Picasso’s art was shaped by it. Born on the Spanish coast, Picasso spent decades in the South of France, drawn to the Côte d’Azur’s light and familiarity. He often drew on his Mediterranean surroundings for inspiration, and once commented: "It’s strange; in Paris I never drew fauns, centaurs or mythological heroes. They always seem to live in these parts."

In Antibes, Picasso painted “La Joie de Vivre” (1946) – a vibrant hymn to life, dance and the sea’s timeless energy. His Mediterranean was exotic and playful, filled with ancient echoes of Greek and Roman myths. It wasn’t just a landscape to him; it was a civilisation painted in color. His vision transformed the Mediterranean from a mere geography into an enduring symbol of artistic renewal.

Artist Henri Matisse has also always been tremendously inspired by the Mediterranean. In 1917, Henri Matisse arrived in Nice and immediately fell under the spell of the Mediterranean light, which was brighter, softer and more consoling than Paris’s grey. This light revived his artistic spirit, giving his canvases new warmth and radiance. “When I realized that every morning I would see this light again, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was,” he confessed.

The Mediterranean light reinvigorated his artistic style with his bold use of colors and sculptural lines. He didn’t just seek to paint the Mediterranean as it appeared, but as it felt: a place both lived and dreamed. His vivid palette captured the region’s warmth, sunlight and sensuous vitality— the rhythm of daily life by the sea. Yet through his simplified forms and unreal, luminous colors, Matisse transformed that lived reality into a dreamlike vision of harmony and timeless beauty.

This fascination is evident in many of his works, such as “The Open Window” and “ Intérieur à la boîte à violon.” Matisse’s fascination with the Mediterranean Sea endured throughout his life. From his first stay in Corsica in 1898 to his long, luminous years in Nice between 1917 and 1954, as well as his journeys across Algeria, Spain, Italy and Morocco. Matisse, in a conversation with Pierre Courthion, once said: “I’m a northerner… so it’s the Mediterranean that made the biggest impression on me.”

For Matisse, the Mediterranean was more than a landscape: it was a revelation. Its radiant light and rich artistic traditions shaped his visual language, linking him deeply to the ancient cultures of the Near East. Through this connection, he explored not mere representation but his own perception of place — a sea both real and imagined, lived and dreamed.

As the poet Paul Valéry once described, the Mediterranean is a “machine for making civilization.” For Matisse, it was precisely that: an endless muse—a source of color, beauty and renewal.

There was also Claude Monet, who came to the Riviera unsure whether he could ever paint it. In letters to his beloved Alice Hoschedé, he confessed both awe and doubt on whether he could really capture its exotic essence: 

Between 1884 and 1888, Monet painted the coasts of Bordighera and Antibes, producing dozens of works that shimmered with new colors and light. The fort, sea, mountains and rocks of Antibes inspired Claude Monet. In 1888, he came to the Riviera from Paris and, although he only stayed four months, completed 39 paintings.Each of Monet's three long stays in the Mediterranean were an opportunity for him to radically transform his work. Each wave, each reflection was a proof that even for an artist of his stature, the Mediterranean could still teach wonder. 

On the southern shore, in Alexandria, Egypt, Mahmoud Saïd, the pioneering Egyptian modernist, found great artistic inspiration in Alexandria, with its beautiful Mediterranean shore and people. His paintings, from “Le Port d’Alexandrie” (1919) to “Les Falaises à Marsa Matrouh” (1948), captured the Mediterranean’s unique light and the quiet lives of its people. Through Saïd’s eyes, the sea became Egyptian, familiar and deeply human—portrayed with the same artistic mastery as in the works of Matisse or Monet, only from the other shore. 

His work also extended to portraying the Mediterranean in other countries like Crete Island and Lebanon, showing his interest in the sea as a cultural and artistic continuum rather than a national boundary.

As the train carried me back to Menton that evening, the sun dipped low over the horizon, ornamenting the sea with light. I thought of all the writers and painters whose wisdom I experienced wandering around Antibes, the exiles and dreamers who had stood before this same sea, searching for meaning, beauty or simply a sense of belonging. Big words scattered around the city but not at all far or unfamiliar from what my dad, me or even Mahmoud Said experienced in Alexandria.

Perhaps that is the secret of the Mediterranean charm: it does not belong to anyone, yet it makes everyone who looks at it feel at home. Its rhythm speaks a universal language, one of lightful souls loving to live, one of longing and one of shared experiences. 

The Mediterranean, after all, is not just a sea. It is a mirror of civilization, of exile and of the human spirit, one I will always carry whether in Alexandria or Menton.

Photo Source: Author's Own