Cristina*FRIENDS ONLY*

I'd like to meet:

Fabrizio de Andre'

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Henry and Marie Clews

Over one of the entrance doors is carved "Once Upon A Time".
It is the entrance to a true world of fantasy and wonder.
Throughout the castle you will find the initials HC -
Henry Clews and MC - Marie Clews, Henry's wife,
along with MMM

"MYTH * MYSTERY * MIRTH"

STORY:

Henry Clews Jr. was born April 23rd, 1876 in New York City, the son of Henry Clews and of Lucy Madison Worthington of Kentucky.

Upon his return to New York he entered his father's banking firm, but after several months decided against banking as a profession and embarked forthwith upon his career as a self-taught painter and sculptor. For the next few years Clews divided his time between his studios in Montmartre and East 19th Street, New York.

Between the years 1903 and 1914, seven exhibitions of Clews paintings and sculptures were held in New York City. "An instinctive sense of form, unsatisfied by painting, led Clews to try his hand at sculpture. Still working quite alone, in a Montmatre studio in Paris he produced enough pieces to show at New York in 1909. There were small heads in marble and bronze, some of them, such as The Absinthe Drinker, studies of types rather than true portraits.

From 1914 on, except for occasional visits to America, Clews spent the remainder of his life abroad. "During the First World War Clews stayed in Paris, living first in a studio on the Rue Hégésippe Mareau, Montmartre, then in the house that had formerly belonged to the French sculptor Bartholdi on the Rue d'Assas. In these terrible years his experience of suffering humanity and his disgust with those who made capital of war and its victims so distressed htis spirit that he decided to find a quiter atmosphere in which to live.

A first marriage had ended in divorce, but in his second wife, Marie Elsie Whelen, he found an understanding companion who surrounded him with a climate favorable to the growth of his genius.

In 1918 Henry Clews bought a medieval fortress

located on a promontory overlooking the Cote D'Azur, just west of Cannes, in Southern France. The castle, originally erected by the Villeneuve family during the fourteenth century, was destroyed and rebuilt eight times before its purchase by the Clews. They rebuilt the two ancient towers, dating to the Roman and Saracen periods; replaced the modern house by one more in keeping with the older structure; and designed the gatehouse, cloister, portals and terraces to reflect Clews‘ eclectic, neo-medieval fancy. Marie Clews created four acres of walled formal gardens, which separate the Chateau from the village of La Napoule.
With his wife and a menagerie of white flamingoes, peacocks and deer, Clews devoted the next 18 years to restoring the castle and peopling it with the sculptured demons and familiars of his visions. On archways he carved scaly sea monsters, on columns, beak-nosed gargoyles, while from every niche and shadow leered the grotesque beings of Clews labeled gods, jinns, ogs and wogs. Over them all, at the entrance to the castle, he chiseled the motto Once Upon a Time.

The Chateau de la Napoule remained Clews' home and studio until his death in 1937. "In this refuge the sculptor devoted himself rigorously to the exposition of his concepts, both in words and in sculpture. Locked in his studio, he spent the morning writing and the afternoon modeling and directing the work of his stonecutters. . . for relaxation there were the beautiful gardens panned by his wife, enlivened by white pigeons and peacocks, swans, and a marabou.

Strange story of Henry Clews and the Chateau

". . . Henry Clews liked to see himself in the part of Don Quichotte and thus he called his servant Sancho and his son Mancha. The chateau he called "Mancha" too. He was strange . . but had enormous class. . . Clews liked his "art"

very much and his guests were compelled to compliment him about his "oeuvre". The "beau-monde" that visited him generally was more aristocratic than bohemian. We have an interesting testimony by a German diplomat, Count Harry Graf Kessler, also an "art connoisseur" and maecenas, who was their neighbour. About a dinner he had once he reports in his "Tagebucher 1918-1937" that when he entered the chateau he characterises it as "Kino-Mittelalter" where the couple waits to welcome the guests. 'The welcoming was astounding,' remembers the count, 'Henry Clew in white trousers and a sort of scarlet red, silk embroidered tunic going until the knee, his very beautiful wife as Queen of the Night, in black with golden stars. Behind them three white dressed footmen, hands on their trouser-seam and behind the lackeys two splendid white bulldogs looking like large Chinese statues'. Kessler seems satisfied with the cuisine and champagne, Clews talked a lot about Nietzsche in an intelligent way, but Kessler is sure (he doesn't know why but he "feels" it), that they were all filmed in that gothic dining-room all evening. . ."

Henry Clews, Jr. died on July 28, 1937 and was buried in an ancient tower of The Château de La Napoule

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If God grant me three score and ten
I shall be ready to depart.
I shall have finished with my art
And with the ways and wiles of men.

I hope, however, to return
But not as Ouija spook before
Pures, spiritists, or Marxist or
Scientific feminist - I yearn

To come at eventide as sprite
And dance upon the window sill
Of little folk, wide-eyed and still
When summer moon is shining bright.

And I shall dance with might and main
To let dear little children see
How quaint and funny I can be.
From science I shall set them free
And give them mirth and mystery
And myth and fairy lore again.
Henry Clews
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Mrs. Clews continued the restoration of La Napoule until 1951 when she announced that The Chateau de La Napoule, had been chartered by New York State as a museum and art center and as a memorial to her husband.

Marie Clews chose to be the wife and collaborator of the brilliant, eccentric sculptor Henry Clews, who saw himself as a modern Don Quixote. Together in the years between the world wars, they refashioned the ruined Chateau de la Napoule on the Cote d'Azur into a cloister of make-believe, their refuge from the modern world.

In her afterword, Margaret Strawbridge Clews tells of efforts before and after Marie's death to preserve La Napoule as a monument to Henry and a haven for artists

She died in 1959 after establishing The Fondation d'Art de La Napoule to facilitate the development of cultural relations between France and the United States.

Music:

Fabrizio de Andre'

Joy Division, Bauhaus, Christian death, Sister of mercy, Death in june, Virgin prunes, Alien sex fiend, Vanishing, Switchblade symphony, Misfits, Ramones, Cure, Depeche Mode, Siousxie and the banshees, NIN, Velvet underground, Nick Cave, The smiths, Morrisey, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Blondie, libertines, White stripes, The faint, Yeah yeah yeahs, White rose movement, Hot hot heat, Strokes,Klaxons,killers, Radiohead, Suede, Pulp, Air, Chicks on speed, Miss kittin, Robots in Disguise, Portishead....

Movies:

rosemary's baby

the man who cried

Breakfast at Tiffany's Cabaret

secretary

the lover

lolita(Lyne)

Magdalene

dangerous liaisons

Total eclipse

Canone inverso Mirrormask Howl's Moving Castle Big Fish
The others, Edward Schissorhands, Il portiere di notte, Death in Venice, The hours, Sleepy Hollow, The Libertine, Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory, Nightmare before Christmas,Corpse bride Le fabuleux destin d'Amelie Poulain, Chocolat, A walk in the clouds, Mary Railly......

Books:

Baudelaire, Lovecraft, Poe, Virginia Wolf, Tracy Chevalier