Charles de Noailles or Arthur Anne Marie Charles, Vicomte de Noailles (26 September 1891 – 28 April 1981) was a French nobleman and patron of the arts.
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Biography
Charles was born in Paris on 26 September 1891, the son of François Joseph Eugène Napoléon de Noailles and Madeleine Marie Isabelle Dubois de Courval. He married Marie-Laure Bischoffsheim on 9 February 1923 and the couple moved into 11 Place des États-Unis in Paris. Charles' mother gave them a plot in Hyères, for which first Mies van der Rohe and then Le Corbusier was asked to design a house. Ultimately, they asked Robert Mallet-Stevens, who would design Villa Noailles.
Their first daughter, Laure, was born on 8 September 1924. In December 1925, their house in Hyères was finished, and Charles and Marie-Laure would continue to expand Villa Noailles over the years. Natalie, their second daughter, was born 28 December 1925.
According to the memoirs of Alexis de Redé (1922–2004),
Marie-Laure was asked: 'Charles, he likes men, or does he like women?' She always replied: "Charles? He likes flowers." In fact he preferred men, as Marie-Laure discovered early in their married life, when she happened to come to his bedroom one afternoon and found him in bed with his good-looking gym instructor. But the incident was not discussed. They lived lives in part separate, in part together, and in many ways as a devoted couple, telephoning and writing to each other every day when they were apart. And even when in the same house, she would write him a letter and push it under his door, and promptly he would reply.