The Art of Acquiring: A Portrait of Etta and Claribel Cone (24 page)

She traveled with a raft of purses, setting aside one for each day of the week—and dozens of keys, which were invariably lost but then found by her traveling companions.

Her nephew, Harold Cone, was charged with making the
“strange men check”—looking under beds and in the closet for possible intruders, and warming the toilet seat in case any “strange men” had recently sat on it.

That summer would take the group from Paris to Luçerne, and then Luçerne to Nice, where she was to visit Matisse. While still at work on portraits of the sisters, he had come down with acute nephritis. He was living in an apartment on the third and fourth floors of 1 Place Charles Felix near the city's old port. The location was crowded with flower merchants, fish salesmen, and farmers selling vegetables. The street sang out with activity, but inside, the 18th-century building was quiet. Etta went to the apartment and wrote of the experience to her brother Fred.

“My visit was a joy. One of the first things he said was ‘When I am able to work the first thing I shall do is to make the drawing of Dr. Cone.’ Then he said, ‘I have a surprise for you’ and presently I turned and there sat the model in the yellow taffeta dress with the large yellow hat on, just in front of the window—the exact reproduction of my latest painting. His bedroom (which is his studio when he is well) was the scene of this picture.

“Needless to say I was thrilled. Well Mons. Matisse would not listen to my plan to leave (Nice the next morning today) for as he explained Marguerite would arrive
demain
and she would show me the original decoration for the Barnes Foundation.

“Also he insisted that Laura and the children come to see him this afternoon, so according to the master's voice here we are. Poor fellow, he has had several stones in the kidney and says he has been over fatigued. I know it was the result of his hard work.”

When Etta returned to her family in Nice to describe the visit and the “master's” request, she was “bubbling like a school
girl,” euphoric not only about Matisse's staged performance for her of
La robe tilleul
(The Yellow Dress), but his wish to visit with her family. The next day the visit took place, but not before Etta was shown the original set of Barnes murals, which had been rejected because they were not the correct size.

“Raymond took us to the studio where we saw the original design for the Barnes’ salon,” wrote Etta. “It is a wonderful production and even Laura and the children got great pleasure from seeing it.

“Next we went home with Mme. Duthuit and my little family party was presented to Matisse, who was still in bed. We were having a very happy visit when the doctor came in. He [Matisse] begged us to await the doctor's departure, but he stayed too long so we left.”

During their visit, Matisse made it clear that he wanted Etta to buy the murals rejected by Barnes and install them in a building she would construct to house the Cone collection. But she realized that even if she could afford the expense of building a museum—and buying the murals—she did not have the energy for the project.

A little dejectedly, Etta and her family moved on from Nice to Italy, where they received another invitation—this one from Gertrude, who wrote, “My Dear Etta, If you should be coming back this way from Italy and it is a pleasant way to come, we would be very pleased to see you. If you are near Geneva or Chambery or Aix les Bains it is all very near us, and we would be very glad to have you and your family lunch with us.”

Ever since trying to sell her the original
Three Lives
manuscript, Etta's relationship with Gertrude had been polite but distant. The two occasionally exchanged letters, and sometimes Gertrude would ask why she and Alice did not see more of Etta.

But in the years after the war, Etta and Gertrude were no longer friends. They had become mere business acquaintances. Etta would buy what Gertrude had to sell. Gertrude's new life revolved around furthering her writing career and, increasingly, farming at Bilignin in the south of France, where she had taken a second home with Alice.

Gertrude had become a legend of sorts. In 1926, Alice clipped Gertrude's hair in something approaching Roman style. It made her look even more the oracle when she sat in the increasingly shabby rue de Fleurus and held forth before a bevy of young writers. But while her reputation as a character grew, she still could not interest a major publishing company in the eighteen books she had written.

All that changed, however, in 1932, when she wrote
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
. All in 1933, Harcourt Brace and Company bought the book, she was finally published in the
Atlantic Monthly
—it serialized the book—
and
she became almost instantly famous. Gertrude had had to wait until she was fifty-nine years old for the publishing world to recognize her genius. But now, she was a major celebrity.

She had sent a copy of the manuscript to Etta, no doubt delighted with the fact that it was to be published. And though Etta wrote back, saying she was pleased to have been mentioned in the book and also happy to read its serialized version in the
Atlantic Monthly,
she didn't have the courage to say what she really felt. She was distressed by the gossip that Gertrude circulated in
The Autobiography
. Etta joined a long list of people who criticized and scorned Gertrude's literary triumph, citing her indiscretions and outright lies.

Leo, who had been working on a book of his own called
Others, Do They Exist?
, called Gertrude's book “a romance. . . little related to the facts” and a “stupid brag and general bosh.” He said, “There is almost nothing in the period before
the war with which I am not acquainted and there is nothing that she has written that is true.”

Hemingway never forgave her for the lies she wrote about him in the book. Georges Braque, André Salmon, Tristan Tzara, and Matisse all signed an article published in
transition
that charged Gertrude with representing the epoch they had lived through “without taste and without relation to reality.”

Etta showed no concern for Gertrude's depiction of her in the book—as a kind of provincial simpleton. But she did object to Gertrude's public disclosure that Margot Matisse Duthuit was actually the artist's illegitimate daughter. Margot herself, it was believed, did not know that the woman she had always called “Mother” was not really her biological parent. Etta learned during her summer abroad in 1933 that the book was going to be translated into French, which meant Margot would surely read it. Etta could not forgive Gertrude. She said Gertrude “can't help telling everything she knows.”

Etta was still upset about the book when she received the good-natured invitation from Gertrude, which she promptly declined. “Dear Gertrude,” she wrote in reply, “Your very kind letter followed us. . . I thank you for your kind invitation for my family and me, but as our route from here will be directly to Paris, we shall not be able to accept, and I am sorry.”

Etta added, somewhat disingenuously, “Your autobiography of Alice Toklas is one of the most interesting and the best of the literature of today. With all good wishes for your continued success I am as always, Your sincere friend, Etta Cone.”

Explaining to her family members her decision not to visit Bilignin, Etta said Gertrude was not worthy of meeting them.

Lent by
—that was their identity as far as the general public knew, and that was their desire. . . The Cones were satisfied to embody themselves in their collection, as if it were sufficient expression of their personalities.

—George Boas, in unpublished notes to his foreword/ introduction for the Cone Catalog, circa 1933-4

I
n 1934, a movie ticket in America cost 35 cents, a night at the opera about $1.50, and a signed etching by a popular living American artist about $5.

That same year, Etta bought a Van Gogh landscape for $9,900. Her brothers, again concerned that she was spending too much money on one type of “investment,” urged her to diversify. Etta's annual income, according to tax records, was then about $60,000. She spent most of it on paintings and sculpture.

But for Etta, the art was not an investment—it was her life. Her every relationship outside her family revolved around art. Collecting was both her occupation and her passion.

“Etta bought because she couldn't resist,” Siegfried Rosengart said. When talking with her about art, he added, he entered into a kind of intense romance from which he
often came away exhausted. Art consumed her as much as the artists whose work she bought.

On the other side of the creative coin, she was the person who hungered for and appreciated what the creators produced. She was the ideal collector of artists’ dreams, sought after because her support enabled them to be free to paint or sculpt. She dispensed money in large enough amounts that artists could immerse themselves in their creative pursuits, able to ignore everything but reproducing their vision of reality. And she shared their vision—lived in that vision—in her cluttered apartment high above Baltimore.

Etta was no longer known as Dr. Claribel's sister, but as an art collector and connoisseur in her own right. Major museums in the United States courted her, sending either their directors or top-ranking representatives to try to win her collection for their facility.

The Baltimore Museum of Art enjoyed an edge, partly because Etta became friendly with the museum's new curator of prints, Adelyn Breeskin, who shared her enthusiasm for the new art. In fact, Etta lent works from the Cone collection to the Baltimore Museum for exhibition in 1934.

But the museum's advantage did not stop others from trying. Alfred H. Barr Jr., who believed the Cone collection to be too good for Baltimore, visited Etta on behalf of New York's Museum of Modern Art.

The Philadelphia Museum's curator, Henry Clifford, made frequent pilgrimages to the Cone apartments.

The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Brooklyn Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Art, Harvard's Fogg Art Museum, and Washington, D.C.'s National Gallery of Art—all sent representatives to Baltimore to woo the younger Cone and win the prized Cone collection for their cities.

The treasures the sisters held had become widely recognized in the art world, in large part because of the completion of Etta's catalogue project. With the help of Siegfried Rosengart, Etta had assembled an approximately 400-page volume with 125 plates, featuring the works she owned of Matisse, Picasso, Cézanne, Coubine, Courbet, Degas, Derain, Van Gogh, Manet, Marquet, Pissarro, Redon, Renoir, Robinson, Rodin, Signac, Sisley, Vallotton, Vlaminck, and Zorach, among others.

The book was “dedicated to the memory of Dr. Claribel Cone by her sister Etta Cone.” It opened with Matisse's portrait of Claribel, followed five pages later by Matisse's portrait of Etta—as if Etta were still sitting several rows behind Claribel at the symphony. From among the ten drawings he did of Claribel and Etta, Matisse himself had selected those he wanted reproduced in the volume, and as always, his instructions were followed.

George Boas, the Hopkins philosophy professor, wrote the book's introduction: “There was never in the minds of the Misses Cones a desire to rival the great museums. There was simply a desire to own these specific pictures which pleased their sense of beauty. Their collection therefore is as much a testimony of themselves as of the history of art.

“The brilliance of Dr. Cone's perception, those flashes of wit, those penetrating observations which made her so engaging a conversationalist, are personified by the pictures hanging on her walls and when one enters her apartment one still feels the personality of its owner as if she were about to greet one in person. Her taste ran to power rather than serenity; it was she who acquired the examples of Matisse's fauve period.

“Her sister's selections, on the other hand, seem to a spectator to be a quieter and more classic type. Her taste leads her to works of art beyond the phases of experimentation,
to pictures which have already reached the point indicated, almost attained in the canvases which belonged to Dr. Cone. The result is that the united collection is extremely well rounded, neither too rough nor too smooth. If one may use a musical metaphor, every suspended chord is resolved and yet there is no monotony.”

Etta printed about 1,000 copies of the catalogue, sending them to nearly everyone she knew, and to all the major museums, universities, curators, libraries, and key art world notables. It was no small gift—the table-top book weighed about seven pounds. But, more importantly, it was a portable representation of Etta's life's work.

The letters of appreciation and surprise from those who received the catalogue poured in from around the world. Alfred Barr Jr., for example, declared the catalogue “magnificent.”

Every letter of appreciation sent to Etta for the gift of the catalogue was rapturous, though some correspondents admitted that, while they were delighted with the book, the art, in all candor, remained incomprehensible to them.

A Van Gogh nephew said he was so surprised by the huge package, shipped to him from Germany, that he at first feared Hitler had sent him a bomb disguised as a parcel. But, in the end, he was delighted by the catalogue, he said.

Etta was triumphant. Her career was at its peak. She had not only bought something, but now she had made something greater from what she bought. Siegfried suggested she print an additional 500 copies, this time to sell, but Etta refused. The book had been printed in Germany, and she did not want any more to do with a country that was now controlled by the Nazis. She even had the book's printing plates destroyed in order to make a subsequent run impossible.

Gertrude, too, was still basking in a publishing triumph when Etta learned she was embarking on a U.S. lecture tour
designed to promote her book. For the first time in thirty years, Gertrude would return to the country she left, along with Etta, in 1904. Etta, apparently ready to put aside her differences with Gertrude, tried to arrange a lecture date for her in Baltimore.

In February 1934, Etta wrote Harcourt Brace and Company, Gertrude's book publisher, that Hopkins did not have the money to pay Gertrude to lecture there. Gertrude's price was $200, a pittance compared with what Etta paid for paintings. But she apparently was not all that interested in bringing her friend to town—she easily could have sponsored the lecture herself, but did not.

Still, Etta wrote excitedly to Gertrude about her coming trip. “Many museum directors have been here this winter and many of them were thrilled to find the bronze and portrait of you in this collection,” she said in an April letter. “I always apologize for the Vallotton portrait, for it is not you.” It was as if Etta had been caught up in the Gertrude mania sweeping the United States, and, at least for the moment, forgotten how difficult their relations had become.

Gertrude and Alice arrived in America on October 17, 1934. In New York, Times Square pulsed with the flashing message “Gertrude Stein has arrived in New York. . . Gertrude Stein has arrived in New York.” The two women were greeted by a rush of press photographers and writers, who wanted to get the first words from the odd pair—one wearing a modified hunting cap and the other sporting a mustache. One newspaperman characterized Gertrude as “a hearty, irreverent old lady.” “Little Gerty” from San Francisco, the “matron saint of Paris art,” was now front-page news.

Learning that Gertrude was coming to Baltimore to visit relatives, Etta offered Gertrude and Alice the use of her apartment
for the stay. Gertrude had never seen the Cone collection, and would have recognized many of the pieces from her own home or Sally's and Mike's. It would have been a perfect setting for the grande dame of the Parisian art world to hold court when she visited Baltimore, because it was a setting not unlike the rue de Fleurus.

But Gertrude, perhaps remembering Etta's snub the previous year, declined the offer. Her letter was cold and dismissive. “My dear Etta, Thanks so much for your invitation, but I am not accepting any invitations. There is so much more happening than in our wildest dreams—I am simply seeing no one except a few very dear friends. . . .”

Gertrude and Alice eventually arrived in Baltimore. Gertrude did spend time with relatives, and shared Christmas Eve with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

But by that time, Etta, hurt and humiliated, had left town for Greensboro. For a woman who adhered to a ritualistic schedule, it was unheard of to travel south in the winter, but she did so that December, after giving away tickets to a lecture Gertrude was to give at the very Baltimore Museum of Art whose director was doing everything possible to win Etta Cone's trust and, ultimately, her entire collection. The Cone family generally assumed she left Baltimore because she wanted to avoid Gertrude.

The trip south nearly killed Etta. The train's sleeping car between Baltimore and Greensboro was drafty, and Etta caught a cold that turned into pneumonia.

Etta's brilliant year ended with the reopening of an old wound. Once again, in retreat to North Carolina, she quietly suffered a physical ailment, though her more severe problem most likely was emotional.

Gertrude and Etta never saw each other again, even when Etta returned to Paris. Gertrude's dagger had struck too deep for Etta to forgive her, and the successful writer no longer needed the financial support of Miss Etta Cone. The old friends, who had no doubt once loved each other, were completely and forever estranged.