The Art of Acquiring: A Portrait of Etta and Claribel Cone (8 page)

Sometime during the fall of 1905, Claribel returned to Frankfurt, while Etta remained in Paris. Now thirty-five, she set up house for herself for the first time in her life. Not entirely prepared to be independent, Etta chose an apartment in the building at 58 rue Madame, where Sally and Michael Stein lived, which was also just a few minutes away from Gertrude and Leo's studio.

Etta justified the choice by saying the concièrge was a piano instructor, so she would be able to continue her music lessons. But, most likely, there were many other reasons for the selection, ranging from a fear of being alone to wanting to be part
of the flurry of activity surrounding the two Stein households.

In the sedate district not far from the Luxembourg gardens, it is difficult to imagine what the Parisian neighbors thought of all the comings and goings between the rue Madame and the rue de Fleurus. Both residences attracted a mixed crowd of rag-tag artists and writers, and foreigners of every breed. The Michael Steins were known to have quieter, more reserved, Saturday evening gatherings than Leo and Gertrude. They lived in an apartment once part of a Protestant church, with a huge living room that had been an assembly and Sunday school room. The various Saturday evening visitors warmed up here until the crowd of merrymakers spilled onto the street and moved around the corner to Leo and Gertrude's, where they stayed until two or three in the morning. “They all had a sense,” said one writer, “that these were their heroic days.”

Pierre Roché, the “natural born liaison officer,” brought many international types to the soirées. His circle included Brits, Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, and Russians. Picasso contributed his ever-growing Montmartre gang—Apollinaire, André Salmon, André Derain, Marie Laurencin, Max Jacob.

The resulting combination, which also included a smattering of Americans, proved electric. In their early Paris days, before Matisse and Picasso, the Steins drew their crowd with Japanese prints and plentiful food.

But after the walls at both the Michael Steins and Gertrude and Leo's became filled with the new art, it was that new art which drew their visitors. “From 1905 to the beginning of World War One,” as one writer put it, “27 rue de Fleurus was the most vital and exciting center of modern art in the world.”

The most clear-sighted view M. Matisse as nothing but a mediocre, ordinary figure tortured by the desire to be original. He is taken seriously only by two or three Jews from San Francisco and by a few dealers who think that works of art. . . need have no more real value than stocks do.

—Louis Rouart, writing in the art review magazine
L'Occident,
November 1907

E
tta soon abandoned her daily museum pursuits in favor of meeting the living artists of Paris. In January 1906, she had her most important encounter. Sally took Etta to meet Matisse.

Judging from the work of his that she'd seen, Etta could have expected a bohemian who would put even Picasso to shame—someone as personally offensive to the bourgeoisie as his paintings. Picasso's work was tame and sometimes even sweet. But that was never the case with Matisse.

There may thus have been some trepidation when Etta set out to meet the artist who so consumed the Stein clan. Was she in for something much worse than the Bâteau Lavoir and its crew?

But if a picture existed of Etta's first encounter with the artist who dominated her later life, it would have shown a visibly relieved face. This leader of the “wild beasts” was a charming gentleman.

Henri Matisse was Etta's age, he was warm, he spoke easily, and he had an engaging manner. His studio was neat and tidy, as was his appearance. Judging from his looks, he could have been a scientist more easily than an artist. And certainly he would never be mistaken for the man who painted his wife with a green stripe down the middle of her face. At this initial meeting, Etta purchased two Matisse drawings. After listening to the artist ably describe his work, she wondered why she had ever thought it unusual.

Etta Cone of Baltimore, the quiet little sister whose mission in life was to make her large family happy and comfortable, was now firmly entrenched in the heart of Paris. To the artists who needed her support for their survival, she became an angel, using the money left her after her parents’ deaths to buy art whose creators were despised, and whose work was ridiculed.

Monsieur Matisse was particularly vilified by critics who sought to preserve the safety of the salon tradition. He had even ordered his wife to hide the press clippings about him because, it was said, “The dirtiness of some of the art critics drove him to desperation.”

Etta had entered another world, one in which the artist's daily struggle revolved around creating. She was one of a small but indispensable group of people who ensured that the artist was able to do just that. It could have been that Etta was developing an eye for the new art, but it was more likely that, at the beginning, when she purchased works by living artists, she was less interested in the images produced than the artists who produced them.

Whatever the reason, she continued to buy. Two weeks after she purchased her first two Matisse drawings, Etta bought a Cézanne lithograph. Two weeks later, she revisited Matisse, purchasing a lovely watercolor,
Port de Collioure
(The Harbor of Collioure), and a drawing. On February 28, she purchased a Renoir lithograph, and on March 17, two Manet etchings. Etta was clearly following Leo's lead in her budding collection—she purchased works by only those artists who had his stamp of approval.

When not visiting studios and galleries, Etta was busy with a new occupation. Gertrude needed someone to type the manuscript of her book
Three Lives,
and Etta volunteered. Gertrude said she was inspired to write the book by Cézanne's portrait of his wife, which Leo had purchased and hung in the room where she worked.

She began writing under the pseudonym Jane Sands, but eventually claimed
Three Lives
as her own, boldly declaring it to be by Gertrude Stein. By the time she was finished, she was satisfied that the book represented a “noble combination of Swift and Matisse.”

Three Lives
marked the start of a new phase in Etta and Gertrude's relationship. Prior to the typing, they had been on equal footing, in that both were under the influence and at the mercy of a dominant older sibling. Now Etta and Gertrude entered into an arrangement in which Gertrude became the dominant one, and Etta continued her role as the helper. It would be the first time Gertrude had been administered to and she, consciously or not, modeled the relationship on what she had seen of Claribel and Etta's.

Describing the sisters, Gertrude wrote that Claribel was the “more” of the two—she was older, better educated, more articulate, and more forceful. Claribel belonged to that rare breed that did not consider life's little necessities to be her
concern. She sought an elevated existence of the intellect, but in order to remain at that lofty peak, she needed someone to take care of business.

Etta, who was that person, fell into the role of caretaker to her older sister. Now that Claribel was in Germany, Etta accepted a similar role in her relationship with Gertrude.

Gertrude benefited from the relationship in several ways. In addition to having her written scrawl turned into legible type, she had an adoring companion who would support her in her literary pursuits—much as Alice Toklas would for the duration of their relationship.

Etta's assistance in 1906 was critical to Gertrude because she and Leo suffered a major disagreement at that point. Leo would not say he liked Gertrude's writing, and Gertrude in turn refused to say she liked Leo's painting. Etta, on the other hand, would be sure to support Gertrude's work and consider her friend remarkable for the undertaking.

Years later, when Gertrude and Etta were no longer close, Gertrude described what led up to Etta's typing of
Three Lives
. Etta, she wrote, was lonesome and interested in helping, so she agreed to type the book. But Gertrude did not give Etta explicit permission to read the manuscript, so Etta typed the book letter by letter so as not to connect words into sentences and sentences into meaning. After realizing the laborious impact her unstated rule was producing, Gertrude gave Etta permission to read the manuscript, and the typing proceeded more quickly.

Most likely, that whole narrative was revisionist history, written by Gertrude for the benefit of Alice B. Toklas. When Gertrude wrote of Etta's typing episode, she was well into her “marriage” with Toklas, who made no secret of her dislike for any woman who might have been intimate with Gertrude prior to her arrival on the scene.

The more likely truth concerning the winter of 1906 was that Etta, then in the midst of a passionate friendship with Gertrude, would have done anything to be of service to her.

As Gertrude moved out from Leo's shadow, she glowed with a strange and powerful presence that surely would have won Etta's heart if it had not already been vanquished. Ernest Hemingway later described Gertrude's sexual attraction as rare and strong. He said it remained “unequivocal” when she was sixty and he just nineteen.

Gertrude once wrote, “It is one of the peculiarities of American womanhood that the body of a coquette often encloses the soul of a prude and the angular form of a spinster is possessed by a nature of the tropics.” The tightly laced Etta Cone was that spinster.

In March 1906, Claribel returned to Paris for a visit and found her younger sister's apartment on the rue Madame now dotted with bizarre images, as if Etta had become a member of the same strange cult that captured the Steins. Etta must have struggled to describe adequately the places she had been and the things she had seen. But Claribel soon saw one of them for herself—Gertrude and Etta took Claribel to visit Picasso at the Bâteau Lavoir.

The elder Cone sister had spent the preceding years in Frankfurt doing research in pathology. As a doctor, she had had but one patient and that, she said, was quite enough. She spent the rest of her medical career at the microscope.

Life's tawdry side held little attraction for Claribel. The Paris she knew was the Louvre, the Comédie Française, and the splendrous neighborhood just south of the Boulevard Montparnasse. Now she would descend into a sort of distorted mirror universe. It was the opposite of everything she thought
acceptable, but one her younger sister found romantic.

Picasso was still working on Gertrude's portrait, and neither he nor his model seemed to mind that the project was taking so long. On arriving with Etta and Gertrude at the rue Ravignan, Claribel was assaulted by the same smells and feelings that had once bothered Etta but did so no longer. Etta had grown used to the Bâteau Lavoir and the strange people who congregated there.

There was Max Jacob, who looked debauched in his ratty suit, thin tie, and top hat. His room smelled of smoke, paraffin, incense, old furniture, ether, and cocaine.

Other artists with studios in the building, and the women who were either “models” or “wives” (but likely neither), roamed the halls with dazed looks that might have derived from hashish, opium, or absinthe. The artist Claribel was taken to see—young enough to be her son—was very much a part of that opiated subculture.

Picasso spoke little English, and because Claribel spoke neither Spanish nor French, what little communication they had was likely through Gertrude, who somehow had a rich exchange with Picasso that transcended language.

During this period, Picasso's most frequent costume was a one-piece blue suit—the type worn by Parisian laborers. His hair, though strictly parted, was disheveled. His hands were perpetually stained. He appeared more street urchin than ground-breaking artist—more boy than man.

By contrast, Claribel was regal. Her soft-waved hair created a crown around her head. Her body, broad and erect, was draped in fine fabric that reached the floor. She held her head aloft in evident self-regard, and let a slight smile play on her lips. At the age of forty, she was someone to be reckoned with and, standing amid the debris of his wretched art studio, the twenty-three-year-old Picasso immediately recognized
her for what she was. He called her “The Empress.”

Following the introductions, Gertrude and the sisters handed the artist the comic pages from an American newspaper that they had saved for him. Gertrude situated herself in a one-armed chair for her portrait session.

Claribel and Etta began sifting through drawings strewn on the floor, setting some aside for a second look. By the end of their visit, the Cones had purchased eleven drawings and seven etchings for 175 francs, the equivalent of about $2 each. Picasso took the money and placed it in his wallet, which he carried in a breast pocket, fastening the pocket shut with a safety pin.

It is unclear what the older Cone sister thought of Picasso, the Bâteau Lavoir, the apparent depths to which her younger sister had sunk, or the company Etta kept. It may have been difficult for her to understand that her upright sister, clad in silk shirt waists, long dark skirts, and veiled hats, would consider the outcasts of the Bâteau Lavoir to be her friends.

But Etta was apparently able to tolerate artists’ foibles that would have scandalized her own set back home. The same Etta, so intrigued by the sordid tales behind Renaissance paintings, willingly condoned, and perhaps even delighted in, the loose living of her artist friends in Paris.

In March of 1906, Paris played host to another salon—the Salon des Indépendants. Once again Matisse caused a furor at the exhibition with just one painting,
Bonheur de vivre
(Joy of Life). Matisse had begun work on it while the controversy was still raging in the fall over his Salon d'Automne entries. His new work was bold for its size—about 5
¹
/
₂
feet by 8 feet—and for its content.

The painting was based on a pastoral tradition, where
figures appeared languorous in the landscape. But Matisse's version was considered by most who saw it to be crudely executed. His central figures were outlined in thick dark lines, his sense of perspective adhered to no law, and his images were overtly sexual. The painting was more a caricature of tradition than a new interpretation of it.

Even Signac, who had previously supported his fellow artist and had also purchased one of his paintings, said
Joy of Life
showed Matisse had “gone to the dogs.” He was so angry at Matisse “that he went so far as to pick a fight with the painter at the café where the exhibitors and the members of the hanging committee met after the opening.” Once again, Matisse was condemned by the official Paris art world, but not by Leo Stein. Leo found the controversial painting to be the most important of its time, and he bought it.