Charles de Noailles (26 September 1891, Paris – 28 April 1981, Grasse), Arthur Anne Marie Charles, Vicomte de Noailles was a French nobleman and patron of the arts.
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Charles was born in Paris 26 September 1891, the son of François Joseph Eugène Napoléon de Noailles and Madeleine Marie Isabelle Dubois de Courval. He married Marie-Laure Bischoffsheim 9 February 1923 and the couple moved into 11 Place des États-Unis in Paris. Charles' mother gifted 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.[1]
Their first daughter, Laure, was born 8 September 1924. In December 1925, their house in Hyères[2] 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.[1]
According to the memoirs of Alexis de Redé (1922–2004), there was a line that Marie-Laure was asked: 'Charles, he likes men, or does he likes woman?' She always replied: "Charles? He likes flower.' In fact he preferred men, as Maire-Laure unfortunately 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 instructer. But the incident was not discussed. They lived lives in part separate, in part together, and many ways 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.,[3]
Charles died 28 April 1981 in Grasse.
Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles were patrons of the arts.
Charles financed Man Ray's film Les Mystères du Château de Dé (1929), which centers around Villa Noailles in Hyères. He also financed Jean Cocteau's film Le Sang d'un Poète (1930) and Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalì's L'Âge d'Or (1930). Charles and his wife appeared in Les Mystères du Château de Dé as well as Le Sang d'un Poète.
The de Noailles had an extensive correspondence with Francis Poulenc and commissioned him on two occasions. He received 25000 Francs for Aubade, which he wrote for one of their balls at Place des États-Unis where it premiered on 18 June 1929. Le Bal Masqué, inspired by Max Jacob's Le Laboratoire Central, was written for a private celebration on 20 April 1932 at the municipal theatre in Hyères.[4][5]
Charles de Noailles was an inveterate gardener.[6] With Roy Lancaster he published Plantes de jardins méditerranéens,[7] and Camellia sasanqua Vicomte de Noailles was named after him.