1. Claribel Cone and Etta Cone, collectively known as the Cone sisters, were active as American art collectors and socialites during the first part of the 20th century.
21 Facts About Cone sisters
1. 2.
The Cone sisters graduated from the Western Female High School.
3.
Cone sisters graduated in 1890 and completed an internship at Blockley Hospital for the Insane in Philadelphia.
4.
Cone sisters 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.
5.
The Cone sisters traveled to Europe together yearly on long trips beginning in 1901.
6.
The Cone sisters were friends of literary figures such as Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas.
7.
Cone sisters 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.
8.
Cone sisters purchased Matisse's Blue Nude for 120,760 francs and Paul Cezanne's mountain painting Mont Sainte Victoire as Seen From Bibemus Quarry for 410,000 francs.
9.
The Cone sisters had a special interest in Matisse's Nice period.
10.
Cone sisters admired Gertrude's Bohemian lifestyle, and biographer Brenda Richardson concludes that there is a strong possibility Etta and Gertrude were at one point lovers.
11.
The Cone sisters built up a large collection of paintings and sculptures by Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne, Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh.
12.
The Cone sisters had an impressive collection of lace acquired from various European sources.
13.
From early drawnwork styles such as reticella, to needle lace and bobbin lace styles spanning the centuries, the Cone sisters amassed important examples that reside in the Baltimore Museum of Art today and have been exhibited.
14.
The collection consists of approximately 3,000 items the Cone sisters had acquired over 50 years.
15.
The Cone sisters' items include Coptic fragments, Middle Eastern silks, eighteenth-century jewelry, nineteenth-century furniture, oriental rugs, African adornment, Japanese prints, Egyptian sculpture, and antique ivory carvings.
16.
The Cone sisters Collection is used by art students and scholars from around the world as a research source.
17.
The Cone sisters Collection includes Matisse's Blue Nude and Reclining Nude, Cezanne's Mont Sainte Victoire as seen from Bibemus Quarry, Gauguin's Woman of Mango, and Picasso's Mother with Child.
18.
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 plates from Matisse's first published book of illustration, Poesies de Stephane Mallarme.
19.
The Cone sisters 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 in Paris.
20.
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.
21.
The Cone sisters were buried at Baltimore's Druid Ridge Cemetery in an area called Hickory Knoll.