CONE, CLARIBEL; AND CONE, ETTA

born Nov. 14, 1864, Jonesboro, Tenn., U.S. died Sept. 20, 1929, Lausanne, Switz. born Nov. 30, 1870, Jonesboro died Aug. 31, 1949, Blowing Rock, N.C. American art aficionados whose passion for French Impressionist art led them to assemble an exceptional collection of the artists of that movement. The Cone sisters, daughters of German immigrant parents, grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. Claribel attended the Woman's Medical College of Baltimore, graduated in 1890, and had an internship at the Blockley Hospital for the Insane in Philadelphia. After she returned to Baltimore, she took some advanced training at the new Johns Hopkins University Medical School. From 1894 to 1903 she carried on research under 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 contact with Leo and Gertrude Stein, became interested in the French Impressionists. Etta began buying paintings in 1896, and from 1902by which time both their parents were dead and they had a handsome incomeboth sisters were ardent collectors. They spent increasing amounts of time in Europe. Visits to the Steins' Paris apartment gave the Cones contact with contemporary French art and artists; the sisters bought their first Picasso in 1905 and 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 she chose to remain there for the duration of the war. 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 Pierre-Auguste Renoir, douard Manet, Paul Czanne, Edgar Degas, and Pierre Bonnard and a large number by Henri Matisse. Claribel died suddenly in 1929, leaving the entire collection in Etta's possession. Etta continued her quiet life, summering in Europe, especially in Italy, and wintering in Baltimore, where she cared for the museum and occasionally opened it for small showings or concerts. Upon Etta's death, the outstanding Cone collection went to the Baltimore Museum of Art.