by:
Gabriel, Mary

Publisher:
Bancroft Press
Published:August 18, 2002
ISBN:1890862061
Format:Hardcover
Pages:282

Description: From Publishers Weekly
Art history traditionally concerns itself with the lives and creative processes of artists. But here Gabriel (Notorious Victoria: The Rise and Fall of Victoria Woodhull) focuses on "the barely recognized link" between modernist masters such as C?zanne, Degas, Picasso and Matisse, and the largely forgotten art collectors Etta and Claribel Cone, wealthyAand stolidly VictorianABaltimore sisters who, starting around the turn of the century, devoted their lives to amassing one of the largest and most remarkable collections of modern art in the world. Although neither Claribel, a sternly imposing physician, nor her retiring and unassuming sibling, seemed likely patrons of modernism, Etta secured the lifelong friendship of Matisse and Picasso while they still languished in poverty and obscurity. Frequently among the first to "discover" the artists who made history, the Cones are nevertheless usually portrayed as provincial spinsters who relied on family friends Gertrude and Leo Stein for guidance. Gabriel ably demonstrates that conventional wisdom has robbed the Cone sisters of credit for their own lively and often iconoclastic aesthetic sensibilities. By inviting us to view early 20th-century painting through the Cones' eyes and by adeptly weaving the threads of their life stories into the larger fabric of the social and artistic history of their time, Gabriel complicates our understanding of the inner lives of these outwardly conventional women and of the relationship between art and its audience. Photos not seen by PW. (June)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Heiresses to a family fortune, Etta and Claribel Cone, Jewish sisters from Baltimore, amassed a major collection of modern French artworks. Their Victorian demeanor and dress belied two free-spirited eccentrics whose bold purchases of avant-garde, sometimes erotic art shocked early 20th-century society. They bought what pleased them, jamming their Baltimore apartments with paintings by Matisse, Picasso, C?zanne, D?gas, Van Gogh, Manet, Redon, Pissarro, and others. Reuters reporter Gabriel... read more

Book Description
For four and a half decades, Etta and Claribel Cone roamed artists' studios and art galleries in Europe, building one of the largest, most important art collections in the world. At one time, these two independently wealthy Jewish women from Baltimore received offers from virtually every prominent art museum in the world, all anxious to house their hitherto private assemblage of modern art. In 1949, they awarded all their holdings to the Baltimore Museum of Art. In 2002, that collection was valued at nearly $1 billion, making them two of the most philanthropic art collectors of our age.

Yet, for complex reasons, the story of the Cone sisters has never been fully or accurately told. Gertrude Stein suggested in her writings that the mousy Etta and the regal Claribel had little artistic sense of their own, buying only what she and Leo Stein advised them to buy. For most of those 45 years, though, the savvy Cone sisters knew exactly what they were doing, and why. But they thought it undignified in life or death to call much attention to themselves, always emphasizing that the art, not its collecting, mattered most.

Mary Gabriel, an art-minded journalist and women's historian, has, at long last, brought the little-known sisters to life, and shone the spotlight on their remarkable achievements.

That these two upright, Victorian women led the way in purchasing the scandalous, erotic art of Matisse, Picasso, and others, is itself one of the most fascinating yet incongruous aspects of their story. Etta and Claribel Cone supported the 20th century's revolutionary artists from their impoverished beginnings -- when Henri Matisse, for example, was reviled by critics as a "wild beast," and Pablo Picasso scratched out a living in a hovel. By contributing to the livelihood of avant-garde artists in whom they deeply believed, the sisters helped coax out, then preserved some of the greatest art of the moder