The Art of Acquiring: A Portrait of Etta and Claribel Cone
The Art of Acquiring
A Portrait of Etta and Claribel Cone
MARY GABRIEL
©2002 by Mary Gabriel
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, without permission in writing from the publisher,
except by a reviewer, who may quote passages in a review.
All works and photographs reproduced herein are done so with
permission, gratefully acknowledged, of the Baltimore Museum of
Art, and are in the Cone Collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art,
formed by Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone of Baltimore.
Published by Bancroft Press
“books that enlighten.”
PO Box 65360, Baltimore, MD 21209
800.637.7377
www.bancroftpress.com
ISBN 1-890862-06-1
Library of Congress Card Number: 2002109262
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition
Cover design, insert design, and author photo:
Steven Parke, What?design (parke@imagecarnival.com)
Interior design: Theresa Williams (theresa@visuallee.com)
Table of Contents
Preface
Prologue
Two Sisters
Baltimore, 1872
Baltimore, 1892
Florence, 1901
Etta
Paris, 1905
Paris, 1906
Blowing Rock, 1908
Claribel
Frankfurt, 1910
Munich, 1914
Munich, 1918
Abroad Together
Paris, 1922, Part One
Paris, 1922, Part Two
Paris, 1923-1924
Lausanne, 1926-1929
Etta, Alone
Baltimore, 1929
Nice, 1933
Baltimore, 1934
Paris, 1938
Blowing Rock, 1949
Epilogue
Bibliography
Chapter Notes
Index
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Preface
As an undergraduate at the Maryland Institute College of Art, I first encountered the Cone collection in its natural habitat—the stark white walls of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Absorbed by the art in brilliant display—the Matisses, Picassos, and magnificent Gauguin, Vahine no te Vi (Woman With Mango)—I wouldn't have given even a moment's thought to the collectors, Etta and Claribel Cone, if the museum had not recreated, albeit behind glass, a small sliver of one of the rooms in one of the private Baltimore apartments where the Cone sisters had originally housed all their illustrious holdings.
This BMA recreation was no bigger than a large closet, but it glowed with warmth, and it beckoned with a sensuality precisely mirroring the Matisse paintings that I, the aspiring student of painting, had just been examining and dissecting. At that moment, I was struck by the fact that the Cone sisters not only bought paintings to live with, but had stepped through the canvases to live in the paintings they bought.
I was both amazed and curious. For me, the essential question was: why did two seemingly severe, upright women, both born around the time of the U.S. Civil War, both clinging to the cloak of Victorianism in their dress and attitude, surround themselves with such avant-garde and erotic art? Etta and Claribel Cone were paying tens of thousands of dollars for art pieces that were as scandalous in their day as Robert Mapplethorpe's or Damien Hirst's are in ours.
In my search for an answer, I found only more questions, so I began to read. The ample literature narrating the events of 1905 Paris, when Leo Stein discovered Picasso and Matisse, frequently mentions the two Cone sisters, I discovered. But Etta and Claribel Cone are most often referred to peripherally as Baltimore acquaintances of Leo Stein and his sister, Gertrude, who had decided to be a writer. Sometimes Etta and Claribel are described as the Steins’ distant relations. And just as often, they are dismissed as wealthy spinsters convinced by Gertrude Stein to spend some of their fortune on artists they neither understood nor appreciated. They are depicted as decidedly lesser lights in the luminous Paris of the early twentieth century.
In those rare instances where the two sisters gain even a modicum of credit for courageously collecting works by artists the world ridiculed, Dr. Claribel Cone is identified as the more important and visionary of the two sisters.
From this early research, I reached one preliminary conclusion that I believe still to be correct. Had they been men, annually purchasing works by Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso, the two sisters would have immediately been accorded the status and stature of accomplished art collectors. Because they were women, however, and women from Baltimore, no less, they were dismissed as indiscriminating “shoppers”—and not just for art, but for many other collectibles as well.
History, I later concluded, was content to ignore or misrepresent the Cones. I came increasingly to blame their plight on Gertrude Stein. In her famous book, The Autobiography oj Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude dismissed the sisters of the world's greatest artists to survive and thrive—and contemporary audiences to appreciate them first-hand. But for the collectors, art history might well have taken an entirely different shape and direction.
During their lifetimes, the Cone sisters allowed selected visitors to view their collection, and lent pieces to specific exhibitions, but the entire Cone Collection was not available for public view until after Etta's death in 1949, when it was bequeathed to the Baltimore Museum of Art. In January 1957, the BMA opened the Cone Wing, and the works went on permanent exhibition, finally allowing the public to see exactly what those two “crazy” sisters had been hiding in their Baltimore apartments—what exactly had kept them so busy for so many decades.
They roamed the galleries of Europe like addicts, for 45 years that spanned two world wars, and built and donated one of the most important art collections in the world. Yet the story of Etta and Claribel Cone has been the subject of only a handful of publications. In her latter years, Etta Cone herself worked furiously on, and spared no expense for, a catalogue setting forth all the elements of the collection. But when the catalogue became popular, she decided not to reprint it or to widen its distribution.
The Baltimore Museum of Art, which houses the collection, has published several Cone catalogues linked to exhibitions or anniversaries, the most recent being Jack Flam's Matisse in the Cone Collection: The Poetics of Vision (its 2001 publication coincided with the April 2001 opening of the renovated Cone Wing); and Brenda Richardson's Dr. Claribel & Miss Etta—first published in 1985, and reprinted in 1992, it apparently went out of print in 2000.
In addition, Barbara Pollock, for Bobbs-Merrill, authored a biography of the sisters in 1962, The Collectors: Dr. Claribel and Miss Etta Cone, which is out-of-print as I write this prologue, and has been for some time.
Finally, various members of the Cone family have added their writings on the sisters over the years.
But in the general literature of 20th century art history, the full and accurate story of the two Cone sisters has been omitted. In this book, I have attempted to do what is long overdue: resurrect and bring to life two of the world's greatest art collectors, and to depict their undying passion for art that so many others initially despised, and that now is almost universally revered.
Mary Gabriel
Baltimore
July 5, 2002
Prologue
Baltimore, 1930
. . . My two Baltimore ladies. . . are sisters—one of them. . . a great beauty, noble and glorious, lovely hair with ample waves in the old style—satisfied and dominating—the other with a majesty of a Queen of Israel. . . but with a depth of expression which is touching—always submissive to her glorious sister but attentive to everything. . .
—Henri Matisse to Simon Bussy, May 24, 1934 On December 17, 1930, Etta Cone waited anxiously in her Baltimore apartment for Henri Matisse to arrive. Eight stories above a once grand street, now the site of scattered gambling dens and prostitutes, Etta and her sister Claribel had built a virtual shrine to the French master. Like his paintings, their rooms off the dark halls of the Marlborough Apartments were vibrant with exotic patterns and bursting with color: Eastern rugs on the floor, needlework pillows on overstuffed chairs, and Indian shawls and Italian textiles that luxuriously draped every available surface.
And, as in so many Matisse paintings, there was a woman in the scene. But instead of the artist's willowy model, lounging in Moroccan pantaloons, the figure in this tableau was a sixty-year-old spinster sitting bolt upright.
The liberating styles of the Jazz Age left Etta unmoved. Heavy black fabric hung from her waist in layers and underlayers that hid every hint of the body beneath. Etta's handsome face was framed by thick dark eyebrows and a crown of silver hair drawn back in a knot—the same style she had worn for more than 30 years. Like a bird, with eyes trained to comprehend, she quietly watched the world.
Etta Cone was considered a bit deranged by at least some of her fellow citizens. At the very least, hers was a world apart. Outside her expensive apartment, America was suffering from the excesses of the previous frenetic decade. Wall Street had crashed with a mighty thud, ushe
ring in the Great Depression, but Etta's world had not changed, nor had her annual income, which was about $60,000 at the time. She lived in her perch high above the city—a sentinel guarding a time capsule. Her home preserved the art from turn-of-the-century Paris—art that had given her young life meaning and purpose. Now, in her later years, she was sustained by that art and the memories that each piece evoked.
Etta, and for a shorter time her sister Claribel, made a career out of collecting. They spent the bulk of their fortunes on works by artists who, at the time, were dismissed as charlatans, or denounced as pornographers, and sometimes both. The Cones were oblivious to the criticism, selecting art without regard to fashion (at the time, Barbizon was all the rage), and also largely without expert advice, unless that advice came in the early years from Leo Stein and in later ones from Matisse himself.
In 1930, Matisse, for the first time, would see his works in the sisters’ home. Etta's only regret was that sister Claribel was not alive for his visit.
Etta first met Matisse in Paris in 1906, when the artist was so poor and in such disrepute that he vowed to stop painting because, he said, it was driving him mad. So dire was his situation that while carrying his paintings home from an exhibition where he received nothing but ridicule, he considered burning his works for the insurance money. Etta was not an art collector at the time, but she came to the rescue and bought two of Matisse's works on paper out of a sense of “romantic charity,” which was the same reason she purchased a few drawings some months earlier from a young Spanish painter named Pablo Picasso.
In those days, the prim Miss Etta Cone was an “angel,” helping to support the artists seeking to launch an aesthetic revolution. In Paris, she could shed her strict Victorian standards, ignore the filth, the opium, the absinthe, the illegitimate children, and the ever-changing mistresses, and see only the men who needed her help to survive and paint. While Etta, at the beginning, didn't understand their art, it eventually consumed her as much as it consumed the artists who produced it. In fact, Etta and Matisse would argue years later over whether she had “made” him or he had “made” her. Their relationship was symbiotic. The artist could not exist without his collector, and the collector had no life without his art. Together, the two thrived.
By 1930, the Matisse collection Etta had assembled, with sister Claribel's help, was considered by some to be the most important in the United States. Fortune by then had also smiled on the artist. The once penniless Matisse had become the highest paid living artist of his time.
Matisse finally arrived in Baltimore just before lunch. The day began as cold and rainy, and by afternoon, snow had begun to fall. But inside the Cone apartments, warmth radiated from the walls and from a woman thrilled to be escorting her favorite artist through her family's suite of apartments. Normally, it could take Etta up to two hours to guide a visitor through the family collection because she would explain each work's rich history and recall anecdotes about that heady time in Paris when the art world revolved less around the official salons than it did the shabby Bâteau Lavoir in Montmartre, and a studio on the rue de Fleurus in Montparnasse. But Matisse had lived those stories, so she did not repeat them.
Claribel had once told Matisse “art and its appreciation are a God-given gift,” to which Matisse replied, “Yes, but sometimes the artist has to descend to hell to get it.” Yet there was no evidence of that hell on the Cone walls—only the stunning fruit of the artist's travail.
Matisse surveyed the Picassos hanging alongside Renoirs, Van Goghs, and Cézannes, but everywhere were his own paintings and sculptures. The Cone home was a harem of Matisse's women. His painted nudes beckoned from every room. Nearly every surface was dotted with his lustrous figures in bronze. After weeks in America, performing official duties as a judge at the Carnegie International Exhibition and meeting admiring crowds, Matisse must have finally felt at home. Later, in an interview, Matisse paid Etta the ultimate compliment. The Cone apartments, he said, were the perfect setting for his work.
Claribel and Etta were so different from America's other great collectors—Albert C. Barnes or Mrs. Isabella Stewart Gardner, for example. The latter two created temples to themselves and their treasures. The Cone collection, however, was a private affair gathered by two bachelorette sisters who lovingly kept their masterpieces in cramped apartments among bric-a-brac from around the world. Every wall was covered in layers of paintings, drawings, and prints. Even the bathtubs were employed as repositories for works of art. A friend of the artist once said Matisse liked to be so close to a model that he could touch her with one hand while painting with the other. The Cone collection afforded the sisters that same intimacy. The paintings that hung on their walls were their noisy companions—companions who were given the complete run of the place.
Matisse and Etta attended the symphony together that night, causing a stir in Baltimore, which was, despite its aspirations, a sleepy southern town. The artist's work had been the target of barbs by the Sun's most famous newspaper columnist, H.L. Mencken. But Etta braved convention to display her foreign friend. If Baltimore was looking for a bohemian, however, it came away from the encounter disappointed. The bespectacled artist in spats, with eyes as steady as a marksman's, looked much more like a well-fed German professor than the painter whose stabs of gloriously hideous color once earned him the title “wild beast.”
The artist spent the night in the apartment adjoining Etta's and departed for New York the next day. Among Baltimore's Jewish community, there had long been rumors that Matisse and Etta were lovers. Why else, went the speculation, would she spend so much money on his crazy pictures? And for many, his overnight visit only confirmed their suspicions.
But in fact no such relationship existed. Etta worshiped Matisse as an artist, perhaps because he committed to canvas the sensuous life she didn't dare live. She also venerated him because he was strong and bold and brilliant—a lion, in her eyes. Etta lived her life in the shadow of lions—her brother Moses, Gertrude and Leo Stein, and, of course, sister Claribel. Despite her revolutionary collection, Etta was nothing more than the perfect Victorian woman.
Two Sisters
Baltimore, 1872
I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry. Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! But I never have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall. And without love, I am sure I should be a fool to change such a situation as mine. Fortune I do not want; employment I do not want: consequence I do not want.
–Jane Austen, Emma, 1816 Claribel and Etta Cone were among thirteen children born to Herman Kahn of Bavaria, and his sweetheart Helen Guggenheimer, whom he married in Richmond, Virginia, in 1856. The young couple, now bearing the anglicized last name of Cone, did not stay long in Richmond, however.
The established Jewish community there scorned him as a new immigrant, the family history indicates, and his “friends” so wanted him out of town that they gave him a stock of goods and a horse and wagon to set himself up elsewhere as a salesman.
Cone moved his growing family to Jonesborough, Tennessee, where Etta and Claribel were born, but life was not easy there, either. The Civil War forced the closure of the store Herman Cone started with a cousin. Cone and his partner were Conferederate sympathetizers. Many of their East Tennessee neighbors were Unionists. That, coupled with the order by General Ulysses S. Grant to expel “the Jews as a class” from Tennessee, compelled Cone to move his family to a farm to wait out the war.
After the fighting ended, Cone's reputation as a Confederate sympathizer lingered, and he and his partner found it necessary to add a Union man to their partnership in order to attract customers. But by 1870, it was evident that one of the three partners had to leave the business because it wasn't big enough to support the families of three men. Once again Herman Cone moved on, this time taking his brood north to Baltimore.
The move was not without its reasons. Southerners—black and white—hoping to escape the turmoil of the war years or the financial ruin of its aftermath, settled in the busy town of Baltimore, where shipping and rail businesses were thriving on Reconstruction era trade. Baltimore was home to a large German Jewish population among whom the Cone children could find suitable mates. The city was also about to enter its Golden Era.