They had four children, but after the birth of her youngest child she became deeply depressed and began to look for ways to find peace and happiness. In 1894 she took up painting and in 1899 moved with her husband to Florence, Italy. In that same year, while walking through the corridors of the Uffizi Museum in Florence, she saw an exhibition of paintings by an English painter named Frank Miles Moore.
It was there that Cornelia's vision of living in Italy permanently transformed into her lifelong dream of building a house on the island of Capri. Her husband died in 1900 and Cornelia persuaded her children to sell their London home so that she could buy the land on Capri for $20,000 (then valued at $5 million). On December 31, 1901, almost penniless after buying the land and building the house with borrowed money, Mrs.
Spelman arrived on Capri with her five children (all under ten years old) and began transforming her dream into reality. She built a community that included not only permanent residences for herself and some friends but also guesthouses where Americans could be accommodated during their visits to Capri. By 1911 it had grown into a thriving colony with more than 100 residents.
The following year Mrs. Spelman started an arts colony on Capri called "La Casa dell'Arte." This was intended to serve as an artistic retreat for creative people from around the world who wished to escape society's distractions and pursue self-expression under ideal conditions. During World War I Cornelia opened La Casa dell'Arte as a shelter for women whose husbands were away fighting at the front lines.
After the war ended, most of La Casa's residents returned home but many others decided to stay on Capri because it offered them the opportunity to live an entirely different kind of life without any distraction from society's demands or cares. One day when Cornelia was visiting Hollywood, California, she met an actress named Frances Marion who lived with her friend Barbara LaMarr there. The two women quickly became friends and Mrs.
Spelman shared all her knowledge about Capri with Marion so that she could understand how it worked and
