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Claribel Cone (1864–1929) and Etta Cone (1870–1949), collectively known as the Cone sisters, were active as American art collectors and Socialite during the first part of the 20th century. Claribel trained as a physician and Etta as a pianist. Their social circle included Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein. They gathered one of the best known private collections of modern art in the United States at their Baltimore apartments, and the collection now makes up a wing of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Their collection was estimated to be worth almost a billion US dollars in 2002.
The family then moved to Baltimore, Maryland. The eldest Cone brothers, Moses and Ceasar, later moved permanently to Greensboro, North Carolina. They established a textile manufacturing business named the Proximity Manufacturing Company (later known as Cone Mills Corporation, now a unit of International Textile Group). The textile mills that their brothers started would make the Cone sisters wealthy, as Moses and Ceasar shared in their financial success with their siblings.
The Cone sisters graduated from the Western Female High School. Against family wishes, Claribel studied at the Women's Medical College of Baltimore. She graduated in 1890 and completed an internship at Blockley Hospital for the Insane in Philadelphia. She then worked in the pathology laboratory of the Johns Hopkins Medical School and did postgraduate work at the University of Pennsylvania with the ambition of becoming a medical doctor, but ultimately never practiced clinical medicine. Claribel focused instead on teaching and research as a professor of pathology for 25 years at the Women's Medical College. Etta was a pianist and managed the family household affairs. The sisters traveled to Europe together yearly on long trips beginning in 1901.
Etta made purchases to help upcoming artists like Matisse, Picasso, and students of the Maryland Institute College (MICA). She also bought at very low prices from the Steins, who were perpetually in need of money and were known to purchase discarded sketches from Picasso at his art studio for two or three dollars apiece. Claribel acquired much more avant-garde works. She purchased Matisse's Blue Nude for 120,760 French franc and Paul Cézanne's mountain painting Mont Sainte Victoire as Seen From Bibemus Quarry for 410,000 francs. Etta, being more financially conservative, was more likely to spend 10,000 francs for a collection of drawings or paintings. The Cone sisters had a special interest in Matisse's Nice period. After Claribel's death, Etta became more adventurous in her purchases, for instance, purchasing Matisse's Large Reclining Nude ( The Pink Nude) for 9,000 francs in 1936, or about $2,000 US at the time ().
Gertrude Stein and her older brother Leo Stein had been orphaned in 1892 and relocated to Baltimore to reside with their mother's sister. This had led to their becoming part of the Cone sisters' social crowd. During Claribel's time at the Women's Medical College of Johns Hopkins University, Gertrude was also studying there. There were many differences between Claribel and Gertrude. These individualistic women were attracted to each other, however, by their common interest in music, fine arts, and sociable conversations. Etta credited Leo Stein with helping her develop an appreciation of modern art. Etta was more reserved. She admired Gertrude's Bohemianism lifestyle, and biographer Brenda Richardson concludes that there is a strong possibility Etta and Gertrude were at one point lovers.
The sisters' particular social contacts produced an advantage from which they could compile a world-renowned art collection. The Cone sisters built up a large collection of paintings and sculptures by Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne, Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh.
Gertrude Stein later tried to undermine the Cone sisters as mere shoppers guided by their taste. In fact, the sisters had an excellent feel for fine art, influenced by the large collection of books on art which they purchased and used. The two sisters lived in apartments next to each other at the Marlborough Apartment building on Eutaw Street in the Bolton Hill neighborhood of Baltimore for fifty years. Their art was hung on the walls of their individual apartments. The sisters' nephew later recollected that their display of pictures covered most of the wall space, even the bathroom walls.
The Cone sisters also had an impressive collection of lace acquired from various European sources. From early drawnwork styles such as reticella, to needle lace and bobbin lace styles spanning the centuries, the Cone sisters amassed important examples that also reside in the Baltimore Museum of Art today and have been exhibited. Examples of the Cone lace pieces include a Chantilly lace fan, a Point de France flounce, and many other styles.
The Cone Collection includes Matisse's Blue Nude (1907) and Reclining Nude (1935), Cézanne's Mont Sainte Victoire as seen from Bibémus Quarry (1897), Gauguin's Woman of Mango (1892), and Picasso's Mother with Child (1922). The Cone sisters collected pieces from throughout Matisse's painting career, accumulating 42 of his oil paintings, 16 sculptures, 35 drawings, 150 prints, and a half dozen books of illustration, as well as over 200 hand drawings, art prints, and illustrated Copper-plate from Matisse's first published book of illustration, Poésies de Stéphane Mallarmé. Other Matisse works they acquired were the 1917 Woman in a Turban (Lorette), Seated Odalisque, Knee Bent, Ornamental Background (1928), and Interior, Flowers with Parakeets (1924). The 500 works by Matisse in the Cone sisters' collection form the largest and most representative group of his art work in the world.
The Cone sisters also acquired many of Picasso's works, and among these were 114 prints and drawings from his early years in Barcelona and from his Rose Period (1905–1906) in Paris.
A portion of the Cone art collection, including many Matisse Lithography and bronzes, resides at the Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, where the Cone Mills were located. Moses Cone's vacation home Flat Top Manor was located in nearby Blowing Rock, North Carolina, and the Cone sisters often visited their brother there. Other visitors included Julius Cone – another of the Cone siblings – and his wife Laura, who was an alumnus of the University of North Carolina. Laura was aware that the Weatherspoon Art Gallery had been formed on the campus in 1942, and she asked Etta if she would be interested in making a gift of art. In her will, Etta left an endowment to the Weatherspoon Art Gallery consisting of sixty-seven Matisse prints, six Matisse bronzes, several modern prints, and art by Picasso, Félix Vallotton, Raoul Dufy, and John D. Graham.
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