Go back to the drawing board on the Cote d'Azur

Avoid the crowds at Tate Modern's Picasso Matisse show,

Picture this: a bowl of ripe summer fruit on a table beneath a window. It is hot outside; the window is open and beyond the shutters, half closed against the bright sunshine, is blue sky and a palm tree. Now this: a group of figures on a beach – the sand is pale yellow, the sea blue, a beautiful sailing boat on the horizon. The figures all seem to be dancing to their own music: two of them are blowing long slender trumpets; the others are smiling broadly. They are clearly having a ball.

Can all this be real? Yes and no. Both scenes are paintings, the first Still Life with Pomegranates by Matisse; the second, La Joie de Vivre by Picasso. But the still life could be the view over the Mediterranean from our hotel room in Nice – substitute the pomegranates for Provençal cherries bought at the market. Picasso's dancing party couldn't possibly be real – the figures are mythological Minotaurs, fauns and a nymph – but their joie de vivre is impossible not to share, glass of chilled rosé in hand, on a beautiful summer's day on the Côte d'Azur.

The paintings and others like them have attracted visitors in their thousands to see the current Picasso Matisse show at Tate Modern. The exhibition has been highly praised and deservedly so, but there's a catch. It has become a victim of its own success, and is now so crowded that you can barely see the work. But there is an alternative: the real thing is but an hour and a half's flight away in Nice. Both artists lived and worked in the area for extended periods, and the gorgeous work it inspired can be seen in several charming venues there, minus the crowds. Flights are cheap and frequent, you can gorge yourself on fresh seafood and authentic salade Niçoise for less than a tenner, and hopping around on public transport is economical, quick and incredibly efficient. It beats south London any day.

Picasso stayed in Paris during the war, but after the liberation he settled near Antibes, first at the little port of Golfe-Juan, where he lived with his lover, the strikingly beautiful artist Françoise Gilot, 40 years his junior. She's the woman in what must be one of the sexiest beach photos ever taken, by Robert Capa, who snapped Gilot striding up the beach, followed in mock subservience by Picasso wielding a huge parasol.

"Nowadays at Golfe-Juan there are private beaches, parasols by the score and tourists by the thousand," wrote Gilot in her revealing 1990 memoir Life with Picasso, "but in 1946 it was almost deserted, and when Pablo and I walked across the street in the mornings for a swim, we were nearly always alone."

Lucky them. Fifty years on, most of this stretch of the Côte d'Azur is pretty hideous, lined with cheap apartment blocks and big hotels serviced by a six-lane highway and the railway, often running along the shore. Antibes, however, is still an attractive town, and in the Musée Picasso, housed in the restored Château Grimaldi, perched above the sea, you can imagine how life must have been. Picasso had his atelier here, and it is now a delightful gallery, displaying some of the work he produced, including La Joie de Vivre and many other sybaritic visions, both human and mythological.

Later the couple, by now parents of Claude and Paloma, lived inland in Vallauris, where Picasso learned to make ceramics at the Madoura pottery. You can still buy limited edition reproductions of his charming, almost childlike designs there – as long as you can spare at least €200. Picasso revived the town's historic ceramic industry and it is still thriving today, albeit producing lashings of tourist tat.

There are also two small museums displaying his frescoes and ceramics, but since Gilot describes Vallauris as "a citadel of bad taste", if time is short better to give it a miss. Head back instead to Nice, take the bus up through the suburbs to Cimiez in the hills above the city and visit the Musée Matisse, housed in an imposing villa, now a gallery, just next door to the Hôtel Regina where the artist spent his last years in a converted apartment and studios.

For Matisse, born in dreary northern France 12 years before his fiery Spanish friend, the light, colour and warmth of the Midi must have been a revelation, one that remained fresh and joyous in his work until he died. It's a shock, then, to see in the museum the first still life he ever painted. Could this sombre little arrangement really be the work of the brilliant colourist who later made the luscious Still Life with Pomegranates, hanging in the next room? The museum also owns fine examples of his cut-outs, including La Danseuse Créole and from the blue nude series, currently on show at Tate Modern. Some of the furniture and objects that Matisse loved to collect on his travels and put in his paintings are also on display.

In 1943 Matisse took to the hills in Vence, about 20 miles inland, to escape the bombs. The chapel he designed there for the nuns who nursed him through ill health is a big attraction, but in the museum in Cimiez you can see his designs for the project – a fascinating insight into a genius a work. He is buried in the local cemetery.

The two artists took great pleasure in visiting each other in the south of France, always intrigued by what the other was up to. Visiting the museums dedicated to them is just as fascinating for lovers of their art, and, unlike at Tate Modern, a pleasure that you will not have to share with hundreds of others.

The Facts

Getting there

EasyJet (0870 600 0000; www.easyjet.co.uk) has return flights from £95 including tax, while Go (0870 607 6543; www.go-fly.com) has fares from £107 including tax.

Being there

Matisse had a seafront apartment at the Hôtel Beau Rivage (0033 4 92 47 82 82) Now you can stay in this 1930s hotel with its own private (but pebbly) beach. Rooms from £122 to £141 per night. The Hôtel Windsor (0033 4 93 88 59 35) has rooms decorated by contemporary artists and its own pool from £77 to £87 per night.

Eat al fresco in a huge choice of restaurants either in the pedestrianised streets to the east of Avenue Jean Médecin, Nice's main shopping area, or in the old town where Le Safari, at 1 cours Saleya, site of a wonderful market by day, is especially good.

Picasso Matisse is at Tate Modern runs until 18 August (020-7887 8008; www.tate.org.uk/ modern). Advance booking is essential.