Picasso, Matisse, and the Cone Sisters of Baltimore: A personal perspective

Sunday, February 20 at 2pm

Video can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/-3guBCUVhc4

Over a period of fifty years, sisters Claribel and Etta Cone amassed one of the most acclaimed collections of late-nineteenth and twentieth-century art in America. Dr. Claribel and Miss Etta were two halves of an idiosyncratic team--Claribel bold and assertive and Etta reflective and sensitive--who used the fortunes of their German Jewish immigrant family to seek out works that inspired and pleased them, regardless of public opinion and with only self-taught expertise.

This lecture delves into Claribel's and Etta's world, following the sisters through personal stories as they travel to meet some of the artists whose works would turn their adjoining apartments into a gallery. They bought art by Picasso and Matisse, and others, whom they came to know well. The sisters' experiences in Paris from 1901 through the 1920s provide an exceptional view of the bright artistic ferment in the city at that time. They were two Victorian women from Baltimore buying avant-garde masterpieces, attending salons with friends Gertrude and Leo Stein, and building a collection that would initially enrage the conservative people around them. Only with time would their keen eyes and unwavering taste prove them right.

Lecturer and author Nancy Ramage, an art historian, is the Charles A. Dana Professor of the Humanities and Arts Emerita at Ithaca College, where she won the Teaching Excellence Award. Among her many grants and honors, she is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in London, and a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. She specializes in Greek and Roman art, and the history of collecting.  

Her book The Cone Sisters of Baltimore: Collecting at Full Tilt (with Ellen B. Hirschland) tells the story of Ramage’s great-great aunts, Claribel and Etta Cone, who were close friends of Gertrude Stein, Matisse and Picasso.