The Art of Acquiring A Portrait of Etta and Claribel Cone

Heiresses to a family fortune, Etta and Claribel Cone, Jewish sisters from Baltimore, amassed a major collection of modern French artworks. Their Victorian demeanour and dress belied two free-spirited eccentrics whose bold purchases of avant-garde, sometimes erotic art shocked early 20th-century society. They bought paintings by Matisse, Picasso, Cezanne, Degas, Van Gogh, Manet, Redon, Pissarro, and others. After their death, their collection was bequeathed to the Baltimore Museum of Art.