Henry Clews, A treasure Collection of an American Abroad
by Ann Landi
Of all the talented eccentrics in the history of twentieth-century sculpture, few are as curious as Henry Clews Jr. (1876 - 1937), a now largely forgotten artist whose work deserves a second look, especially in the anything-goes climate of Post-modernism. Clews was born into a prosperous and socially prominent New York family. His father had made a tidy fortune on Wall Street, and the family spent summers at a sprawling estate in Newport, Rhode Island. Young Henry rebelled against the path set for him from an early age, dropping out of two prestigious institutions, Groton Academy and Amherst College, and completing his education abroad at the universities of Lausanne and Hanover. He tried unsuccessfully to adapt himself to a career on Wall Street, but didn’t really have the stomach for the storms of the market. (According to his son’s memoir, Clews’s days at his father’s office ended when the latter found him reading Shakespeare in the midst of a minor financial panic.) |
