The Art of Acquiring: A Portrait of Etta and Claribel Cone Read Online Free Page A

or scientific research, as it was for Claribel, or history and art, as it was for Leo.
    But, thanks to brother Moses, art would soon become Etta's world, and her passion.

    In the 1890s, artists began to attract the attention of Americans who might not have thought of them a decade before. Popular magazines featured stories on the artists’ bohemian lifestyles, and etiquette books described the proper ways for women to visit artists in their studios. In 1894, George Du Maurier added to the craze with his racy novel Trilby, about an artist's model in Paris. The book became a huge hit in the United States.
    Interest in artists grew at about the same time home decorating began to focus on culture rather than simply comfort, and the trend became one of filling a home full of stuff. Against that background, Etta made her first grab at independence.
    A year after their father's death, Moses gave Etta $300 to buy something to freshen up the family home. It would have been reasonable to expect her to buy new curtains or rugs, or furniture for the parlor. But Etta had been introduced by Leo Stein to the world of art, and it was to art that she turned with her brother's money. After seeing paintings by American Impressionist Theodore Robinson, she authorized a bidder to get “as many for the money as possible” during an estate sale in New York on March 24, 1898. Her money purchased five Robinson paintings.
    When the purchases arrived in Baltimore, most of the family was shocked, though Moses’ wife Bertha admired the pictures. Not only were they of the ultra-modern Impressionist school, but they were astronomically expensive.
    Most families that hung art in their homes then show-casedreproductions of Italian Renaissance Madonnas whose prices started at 15 cents. Louis Prang and Company of Boston offered popular facsimiles of paintings touted as equal to the original, and cost from 10 cents for landscapes and floral paintings, to $15 for a large Madonna based on an original by Murillo. But few families paid $300 for original art.
    For Etta, these purchases did not represent decoration but personal rebellion. She had taken one of the few liberties afforded a woman in Victorian society—the opportunity to buy something—and she had made a bold statement.

    In the fall of 1897, after concluding her studies at Radcliffe, Gertrude Stein chose not only to remain in Baltimore, but, following in Claribel's footsteps, enrolled in medical school. Johns Hopkins Medical School had opened its doors in 1893, with fundraising assistance provided by a group of women on the condition that the school accept women students. Hopkins became the first major U.S. medical school to do so. The place had the excitement of an experiment.
    Apparently having nothing more pressing to do, Leo decided he, too, would return to Baltimore and to take up research at Hopkins in biology.
    Claribel at the time was one of forty-six people at Hopkins taking special courses for doctors with the renowned Dr. William Welch. Her interest in science was based on a love of abstract principle—the mysteries of life under a microscope. Gertrude was interested in the meat of life—blood, birth, and death. For her, medical school was a way to continue studying human behavior.
    Until 1900, Gertrude and Leo lived together in a house on Biddle Street, not far from Etta and Claribel's Eutaw Place residence. The four were good friends, mingling socially andtaking part together in the city's meager cultural offerings. Leo, declaring he could “do nothing in a laboratory,” disrupted the relationship and routine, declaring that he would go to Florence (Italy) to study art history and to find his “great idea.” With that proclamation he was gone.
    Gertrude, however, remained in Baltimore to continue her medical studies. Claribel and Gertrude would ride the trolley together and then stroll leisurely toward the school and hospital—two black, mountainous, hat-topped shapes, their