Henry Clews Jr.

Henry Clews Jr. was an American-born artist who moved to France in 1914 in search of greater artistic freedom. He is known for the reconstruction of a Mediterranean waterfront chateau on the French Riviera a few miles west of Cannes, known as the Chateau de la Napoule, which today is operated by a trust and is open to the public. Together with his American wife, Elsie Whelan Goelet Clews, renamed “Marie” (1880 – 1959), Clews began rebuilding the medieval fortress in 1918 and continued the fantasy-themed construction for the rest of their lives.

The main building included an artist’s studio for Henry and an adjacent seaside castle tower enclosing a lover’s tomb where both Henry and Marie are laid to rest in side-by-side stone caskets.

Clews preferred mediums were oil paint and sculpture. The smaller sculptural pieces were often rendered in limestone or porphyry while the larger sculptural pieces were commonly rendered in bronze or marble. His later art was exhibited primarily in France. His earlier art in America was not exhibited widely. There are records of at least two exhibitions in New York during 1909, both at the Fifth Avenue gallery of M. Knoedler & Company. The first exhibition was in March for two portraits and the second in November was for ten sculptures. The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art also has some records of an exhibition from May to August in 1939 after his death. The Louvre museum in Paris records a number of Clews' works in the La Fayette database of American art in France. 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. The American Art News of 12 February 1916 refers to this sculpture being on display in the galleries of Jacques Seligman & Co. at 750 Fifth Avenue in New York City. There is an unconfirmed report of a copy of the “God of Humormystics” being on public display somewhere in the State of Virginia, so if the report is true, the copy is likely the same one that was on display in New York in 1916. 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. He stands on a base, bearing a woman's head and hand and a colossal frog. He holds in one hand a rose and in the other nothing. About the round base circle 18 heads, including those of the Saviour and the Virgin, and others, crowned and uncrowned, but nearly all grotesquely ugly. Inspired by the early art of the Chinese the work is a bitter satire on life, sardonic and rather horrible, if somewhat fascinating."

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