Henry Clews Jr.
He is known for the reconstruction of a Mediterranean waterfront chateau on the French Riviera a few miles west of Cannes, known as the Château de la Napoule, which today is operated by a trust and is open to the public.
[10] Clews then joined the family financial firm under the tutelage of his father, but that business held no long-term future for his artistic sensibilities.
[18] Clews' best-recognized work is the bronze and marble sculpture entitled "God of Humormystics", the original of which is on display in the garden at Chateau de la Napoule.
[20] The sculpture itself was described by a critic and reviewer in 1916 as A strange artistic production, full of odd imagery.... From a basic column of colored marble, about whose base disport three bronze amorini, one with wings and drunk, and another uplifting a wreath, rises an emaciated and strongly modelled bronze figure of an aged man, crowned with a bird's nest at whose edge two doves bill and coo.
[21]Another sculpture of a solitary male figure entitled "The Thinker" has been on public display in the Brookgreen Gardens in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for nearly 80 years.
Brookgreen also holds and displays several other smaller works by Clews, consistent with its mission "To collect, conserve and exhibit figurative sculpture by American artists.
[26] A joint exhibition[27] of both Abeles' and Clews' art entitled "Creative Encounters" ran from July to October 2012 at the Wentworth-Coolidge Commission in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
They were the parents of one child: After the outbreak of World War I, they moved with their young son to the Château de la Napoule, a medieval chateau along the French Riviera.
[6] During their two decades together in residence at the chateau, in addition to the reconstruction and the creation of art, they also hosted elaborate parties for European society and American expatriates.
The local villagers were not forgotten by the Clews, who built a fisherman's beach with harbour and arranged for religious services and other events on the chateau grounds for people in the town.
In the 2007 journal "Siennese Shredder",[10] Clews is the subject of an article describing his "quirky, quixotic kingdom" and is characterized as a "reclusive misanthropic sculptor".
"[38] The French author and academician André Maurois wrote a contemporary account entitled "The Strange World of Henry Clews", which is said to have a preface written by painter Jean-Gabriel Domergue, but the volume is rare.
[42] Henry and Marie Clews' "artistic and eccentric" early 20th-century lifestyle on the French Riviera is hinted at on the inside of the main entrance door to the Chateau where the estate motto is carved into the lintel: "Mirth, Myth and Mystery".
