Nancy Ramage, art history professor emerita, will speak about her new book, The Cone Sisters of Baltimore: Collecting at Full Tilt, at Bookery II on Saturday, September 20, at 2:00 p.m.
Ramage's book, written with her mother, Ellen B. Hirschland, is about two Victorian women who collected avant-garde art in Paris, despite the ridicule of conservative Baltimore society in the early twentieth century.
Dr. Claribel and Miss Etta Cone, two halves of an idiosyncratic team, used the fortunes of their German Jewish immigrant family to seek out works that inspired and pleased them, regardless of public opinion. They were friends of Gertrude Stein, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and others in the artistic and literary circles of Paris. They each boldly struck out to make purchases of artworks that turned their adjoining apartments into a virtual museum, amassing one of the most acclaimed collections of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art in America.
These women were the great- and great-great-aunts, respectively, of the authors, who based this remarkable story on their letters, as well as on the personal recollections of Ellen Hirschland.
The richly illustrated biography documents their lives and explores the collection that was eventually bequeathed to the Baltimore Museum of Art.
A book signing will follow the event.
