ECone, Claribel and Etta1864╨1929 and 1870╨1949art collectorsBorn in Jonesboro, Tennessee, Claribel on November 14, 1864, and Etta on November 30, 1870, the Cone sisters, daughters of German immigrant parents, grew up in Baltimore and attended public schools there. Claribel then entered the Woman╒s Medical College of Baltimore, graduated in 1890, and after interning at the Blockley Hospital for the Insane in Philadelphia returned to Baltimore, where she took some advanced training at the new Johns Hopkins University Medical School. From 1894 to 1903 she carried on research under Dr. William H. Welch at Johns Hopkins and taught pathology at the Woman╒s Medical College. In the 1890s Claribel and Etta together developed an informal salon where musicians, artists, intellectuals, and professional people found great delight in Claribel╒s unconventionality and taste in antiques and Etta╒s cuisine. Etta, shy and submissive, also had pronounced taste in art and, perhaps through acquaintance with Leo and Gertrude Stein, became interested in the French Impressionists. She began buying paintings in 1896, and from 1902, by which time both their parents were dead and they had a handsome income, they were both ardent collectors. They spent increasing amounts of time in Europe. Visits to the Steins╒ Paris apartment brought them into contact with contemporary French art and artists; they bought their first Picasso in 1905, a Matisse in 1906. The closing of the Woman╒s Medical College in 1910 ended Claribel╒s medical career. She was in Munich when World War I broke out in August 1914 and chose to remain there for the duration rather than risk travel in wartime. On her return to Baltimore in 1921 she rented a large apartment in the same building as hers and Etta╒s and arranged it as a private museum for their growing collection. Set off by Renaissance textiles and furniture, the collection of paintings eventually included works by Renoir, Manet, CÄzanne, Degas, and Bonnard and a large number by Matisse, with whom Etta in particular enjoyed a long friendship. Claribel Cone died suddenly in Lausanne, Switzerland, on September 20, 1929, leaving her part in the collection to the disconsolate Etta. Etta continued her quiet life, summering in Europe, especially in Italy, and wintering in Baltimore, where she cared for and occasionally opened the museum for small showings or concerts. At her death in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, on August 31, 1949, the great collection went to the Baltimore Museum of Art along with a bequest of $400,000 for the construction of a new wing to contain it. ╓styl `
