Original subtitles

UNESCO estimates that about 60% of the world's greatest masterpieces

are here in Italy, and mostly here in Florence.

The art in Florence is some of the greatest in the world.

But most wouldn't be here if it weren't for the Medicis,

proving patrons and collectors are as essential to great art as the artists themselves.

Renaissance masters worked here in Florence - Michelangelo, Leonardo,

Botticelli, to name just a few.

This is the story of two latter-day Medicis, not from Florence, but from Baltimore.

This picture was taken on this very spot in June 1903.

And the two portly ladies on either side of the author Gertrude Stein

are Dr Claribel and Miss Etta Cone, and this is the start

of an adventure to make them two of the world's great art collectors.

And not at all what you'd expect.

These maiden ladies from Baltimore will support the penniless Picasso,

buy one of the great Cezannes, become patrons and friends of Henri Matisse.

How did these buttoned-up Victorian sisters create a collection of such uninhibited works of art?

The trail of clues I hope will help me unravel the mystery of Etta and Claribel begins here in Italy.

This is where the sisters were initiated into the world of art.

Florence was part of the grand tour which introduced the wealthy to the splendours of Europe.

It also opened up a world of light, colour, sensuality and sexuality.

There were reports of grown women collapsing in a faint at the sight of the naked David.

Before this, the closest Etta and Claribel would have come to great Renaissance works of art

would have been descriptions in books or poor reproductions.

So when they arrived in Italy and saw the real thing in technicolour, they were overwhelmed.

..Signs of interesting sexual tension, you could say, happening in the piazza here.

We've got the Rape Of The Sabines over there, Perseus having cut off a woman's head over here.

So we have the battle of the sexes going on in this very piazza here.

Sharing in the delights with Etta and Claribel were their friends from Baltimore -

Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo.

For all four, unmarried and from Jewish-American families,

these trips to Europe were liberating adventures.

Leo Stein had lured the others to his favourite city.

Familiar with its masterpieces and knowing the latest art theories, he was a perfect guide for the Cones.

Etta revealed in her diary that SHE was the perfect pupil.

"Monday, 3rd of June. After breakfast at 10am, Leo came by and took us to the Uffizi Gallery.

"Fra Lippo Lippi interested me keenly."

He's my favourite sex-maniac monk artist. How many others are there?

He had to be locked in his room. He wouldn't finish his work because he loved chasing nuns.

He tied sheets together, climbed out of the window and ran off anyway.

He kidnapped this nun and they had a couple of children together...

"Tuesday. Went to the Uffizi for a second visit and was charmed, as the first day.

"Saw Botticelli's Birth Of Venus."

..Botticelli's beautiful, lovely graceful, linear lines.

The Birth Of Venus and the Primavera here were hanging in the...

sort of Medici weekend villas as wonderful conversation pieces.

"Wednesday. Made our third visit to the Uffizi

"and as usual, Leo in his leisurely way flitting from one to the other, each of us delighted

"to welcome his wonderful brain."

Being amongst those paintings, it's not hard to understand how a love affair with art can begin.

Under Leo's guidance, the sisters' love affair grew beyond the wonders of the Renaissance

to an understanding and appreciation of modern art.

It wasn't only the art they fell for, but the environment as well.

When the city grew too hot, they'd pack a picnic and escape to the cool forests above Florence.

They came here with Gertrude, they took the tram out here,

and this was a place they could come to be by themselves, be women together...

Away from the guys. This was a women-only trip. Absolutely.

And because they were away from everyone else, they could smoke,

they could climb up these paths, they could lie on the grass,

they could talk...about who they were, what they wanted to be,

they could have a good time, they could hike some more, get drunk, which they did.

Really? Yeah.

It doesn't seem right for the ladies, as we see from the photographs.

It seems incongruous, but underneath that Victorian facade,

beat really very individualistic, idiosyncratic, even eccentric hearts.

Was there any kind of romance involved when they came here?

You know, you're sort of coming abroad, the sunshine, a beautiful place away from home.

Did they have men-friends or anything like that?

Well, their main man-friend was Leo Stein.

And the romance, in that sense, was the romance with art, not with Leo.

Right. But of course, Gertrude was herself a very dynamic and sensual character.

And I think that Etta was enamoured of Gertrude. Right.

And there's a sense in which Gertrude was enamoured of Etta

because Etta was a very devoted person.

Leo Stein had a summer villa near here, and Gertrude, Etta and Claribel often came in the summer.

There are reports that Gertrude organised ladies' bathing parties

where they'd go skinny-dipping in the pond behind me.

It's not known if Claribel and Etta joined them, but it may have happened,

because when they came to Italy, they did let their hair down.

For all of these people residing here or travelling through Florence and Italy,

this was not real - real life was at home. People came here to emancipate their senses.

Can you explain why the Americans...

here in Florence at that time,

were so interested in the Renaissance?

There was this feeling that the time had come for the United States

to be the place for the NEW Renaissance. So ancient Greece,

ancient Rome, Medici Florence, somehow France in the age of Louis XIV

and then the United States.

So they had necessarily to look back to Italian history and Italian art

to be inspired to learn

in order to be able to be like Italians of that time had been.

So it's very much something internal to American ideology and identity building.

Art museums in America, which began to be created in that period -

the Metropolitan in New York, the Art Institute in Chicago - proposed an anthological idea of Western art,

starting with Italian primitives and culminating with the Impressionists.

So Italy in that specific period

is elected as the starting point

of a civilisation which is to become Western. And this is where art starts.

What started for the sisters in Florence was to end half a century later in Baltimore.

By the time they had died, Etta and Claribel had amassed an extraordinary private collection -

over 3,000 objects shipped from Europe to their modest apartments in the Marlborough Building.

Behind the doors on the eighth floor, sculptures, fabrics and antiques

were crammed side by side with Picassos, Cezannes, Bonnards, Van Goghs

and the largest single collection of Matisses.

It was art they wanted to live with.

As collectors, they weren't just buying paintings, they were actually living in the paintings they bought.

They had stepped through that Matisse frame and were living there.

They had arranged their furnishings. It was a sensuous, sumptuous existence they lived in.

There's also the Blue Nude which had been burned in effigy by art students in Chicago

when it was travelling as part of the Armory Exhibition.

These paintings in their day,

were as notorious as Richard Serra's or Robert Mapplethorpe's are today.

One very perceptive guest visiting them said, "When you looked out the window, you saw the past,

"and when you looked on the walls of their apartments, you saw the future."

They really had this time capsule.

At first, I thought it was a time capsule of Paris at the turn of the century, but in fact,

it was the future they were protecting - the future of art.

But this time capsule didn't survive.

The Marlborough was gutted in the '60s and the collection removed to the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Without a complete picture of the sisters' apartments, the museum approached Maryland University

to try and put the pieces together.

The first thing we had to do was find the original floor plans.

A graduate student of ours found the original architectural drawings.

We ended up figuring out which of the two apartments. Yeah.

These are their apartments.

This is all Etta's down here, and this is all Claribel's.

We figured out what was a living room or a kitchen

and then we had to go through the photographs. This was the fun part in some ways. Here is...

a picture of the Blue Nude. We don't know what room it was in.

Here's the Pink Nude here. But if you look at the front of the trunk here... Yeah.

..and you look over here, it's the same room. Yes.

So you figure out they're facing each other.

It's a startling revelation - two Victorian ladies lived with nudes on either wall in the same room.

Facing each other. Yeah.

It's incredible.

Look at all the boxes. They had lots of boxes full of textiles,

postcards they collected, an immense amount of stuff. Yes.

Some person said they stored paintings under the bathtub. Yeah.

We've put one person in.

Here's the, um...picture of Matisse

when he... He looks dapper, doesn't he, in a three-piece stripy suit?

We had to add legs to him. A student added the pants,

because he came to pay respects to Etta after Claribel died. Yeah.

So when we did the reconstruction, he's the one individual.

It's interesting to know whether he chose the paintings he's next to as ones he wanted to be seen against.

He's in the dining room here, and everyone says that everyone shared their meals in Etta's dining room.

Her apartment was really where they lived. Even when Claribel was alive,

it was more of a museum, a place to look at work.

She had another apartment where she lived.

Let's go into the living room here.

Matisse liked coming here, cos his paintings are so well displayed.

It's the mixture, the richness, the way everything combines,

to give a feeling you never get from black-and-white photos. It was all around you.

It's just a wonderful sort of... artistic roller coaster.

Ah, yes.

I'd like to see the bathroom. D'you wanna go in the bathroom now? Yes.

Let's go out in the hallway and walk in the bathroom on Claribel's side.

I bet they kept paintings in every single room. This is a surprise to see. Yeah.

There again, very sort of strong, vivid, sensual pictures.

Oh, wow! This is wonderful!

So what have we got here? We've got, um...

This looks like a Renoir. Very suitable for a bathroom.

Just short of a towel. "Villon, after Renoir."

She must have put all her "in the school of" paintings here. Yeah.

One thing interesting amongst these to find was a watercolour...

Oh, by Claribel Cone.

So this is the one place in the apartments that we found a work by her.

Do you think there's a whole stock of her work? ..It's not bad. Let's see what's down here.

Lavatory by...unsigned. We shouldn't be looking at that - Claribel's throne.

The only things missing from the virtual tour were Claribel and Etta.

Their nephew, Ed Cone, knew both women personally.

He invited me to his house in Princeton.

So Nancy and Ed were engaged in a sort of seance here to bring back the spirit of Etta and Claribel.

I have one of Claribel's capes.

May I show you that? Yes, because we want to get the feeling of them.

This was passed down to me from my mother and my grandmother.

So this is... What is that?

This is Claribel's velvet cape with a beautiful silk lining.

Excuse me. No, that's... And you get a sense here... I can see that.

She had a great sense of style, her dress sense.

Yeah. She called attention to herself everywhere she went.

There's a family legend that the Kaiser bowed to her

at the opera in Munich one night, thinking she was a member of nobility. There, she's about 16,

attractive, I think. Distinctive looks, yes, she is very attractive.

Claribel went to medical school and became a doctor,

not a practising clinical doctor, but a researcher in pathology.

And that was very unusual in those days.

Of course, there are all kinds of legends about Aunt Claribel,

most of which turned out, as far as I can make out, to be true.

Like, when she went into Ely Cathedral, there were bats she was afraid of,

so she opened an umbrella and walked through the cathedral with an open umbrella.

You know, she was absolutely fearless, in the sense of not worrying about public opinion.

When she bought books, if it looked like anything she might want,

she'd buy three - one to read, then one to put in the library, her library,

then one to give away to friends. A shopkeeper's delight. Absolutely.

This is Etta with my grandmother... That's lovely. Oh, yes.

Dorothy Long. She's sort of... smiling and...dancing with her.

You see how lively she was there. Yeah.

Although she never had children of her own, she was attracted to children.

So long as they were at a distance.

She was wonderful to my brothers and me and we all loved her very much. So we felt her warmth tremendously.

She always wore long dresses, as far as I can see. Oh, yes.

Those dresses were also functional.

Um...

when she travelled in Europe, there were all kinds of documents, money,

things, hidden in what she called her underground.

So these were not simply skirts, they were balloonously folded and refolded...

with pockets in every direction. Interesting. Probably mugger-proof.

In 1949, when she died - and I remember her at that stage -

she was still wearing long dresses

and by that time, of course, it was very unusual. Mm.

Etta and Claribel were two of 13 children born to German-Jewish immigrants, Helen and Hermann Kahn,

who'd come to America fleeing persecution.

They changed their name to Cone and set up a small grocery business which thrived during the Civil War.

But it was cotton that was to make the family fortune.

The oldest brother Moses invested wisely, and the Cone mills went from strength to strength,

soon becoming Levi's main supplier of denim.

With the wealth this provided,

Moses was able to give his unmarried sisters, Claribel and Etta, modest incomes

and build a Cone family retreat at Blowing Rock, North Carolina.

Called Flat Top Manor, it's now a national park.

When was the house built?

The house actually was started in 1899. Yeah.

And the Cones moved in in early 1901, the spring of 1901.

Was it a reasonably common thing for Jewish immigrants coming in from Europe

in the middle of the last century to make money as fast as the Cones did and build a place like this,

so impressive? The aspiration, you know, the rags-to-riches story,

is in my opinion one that resonates within American culture at large.

Opportunity for all. This family made the best of an opportunity.

When Hermann Kahn, the patriarch, came to America, he was a peddler,

about as low as you can go on the economic scale, and yet his son built this estate,

this 3,600-acre country retreat here in Blowing Rock. A huge estate, isn't it?

When Etta and Claribel were up here - they'd be 30 years old -

what would they do during the day? What would be the activities here?

Well, besides looking at landscapes,

as we're doing,

riding carriages and hiking were probably two things they'd enjoy.

And Etta, Claribel and Bertha Cone were great letter writers

and took that very seriously.

Bridge in the evenings, Etta often played the big Steinway that was in the music room, the parlour.

Yeah, she was a keen pianist.

I might also add, Michael, this was a functioning country estate, and all the slopes down below us

would have been rows upon rows of apple trees, and you know,

Matisse actually commented on receiving some apples and enjoying some when he visited Baltimore.

I heard about that. And Gertrude Stein also got some of the famous Blowing Rock apples. Exactly so.

Some were shipped to her, and she said they arrived just in time for New Year and were most enjoyed.

Apples from this estate went to many locations.

Amazing, just sitting here, the time we've been talking, how it's changed out there.

You could see for miles, and now it's like being above the clouds.

Unlike Claribel, who was more interested in her medical work,

Etta felt a strong sense of family duty.

Always eager to help in domestic matters, she was given $300 to decorate the Cone's Baltimore home.

Etta surprised everyone by spending it on five canvases by Theodore Robinson,

now very collectable, but then a little-known American Impressionist.

These French scenes not only started the Cone collection,

but ensured that Etta would one day go to France to see for herself.

The sisters had one great advantage that would help them as collectors - they loved shopping.

They were both skilful and dedicated shoppers, and Paris was their favourite marketplace.

Fabrics, lace, gloves, jewellery, books -

anything not too expensive for their purses or too large for their handbags.

But they hadn't come for retail therapy alone.

Their inspirational friend Leo Stein was now living on the Left Bank with his sister Gertrude.

Etta rented a flat round the corner to be close and took on an unpaid job typing Gertrude's latest novel.

I think Etta really fell in love with Gertrude Stein.

And Gertrude may have reciprocated that at some point in their lives

and it may or may not have been a real relationship in some kind of sexual way.

But in terms of her being in love with her, infatuated,

becoming a different kind of person, becoming alive in a way,

um, that anyone who's ever been in love understands - that was Etta.

It's so clear in the journals and letters that she became a different person - suddenly, she's sparkling.

And she's happy and having fun and doing things that are, you know, "This can't be Etta!

"This isn't the Etta we know."

# Is it a sin, is it a crime

# Loving you, dear, like I do?

# If it's a crime, then I'm guilty

# Guilty of loving you... #

There's a story that Gertrude once brought Etta to Picasso's studio here in Montmartre

when having her portrait painted. Montmartre then was full of pimps, drug-pushers and prostitutes -

a far cry from the tea rooms of Baltimore.

They were confronted with a set of dingy stairs leading down.

When they got to the door, Picasso wasn't there.

The only clue they had was a note pinned to the back of the door.

On it, Picasso had painted himself, trousers down, crouched over the toilet. Gertrude thought it funny,

but Etta was shocked. However, she recovered enough to buy two of Picasso's sketches for 120 francs.

As Picasso and his girlfriend lived here for 50 francs a month,

this would have made a considerable difference to their life.

This is a wonderful drawing that Picasso actually sent along

in a letter from Gertrude Stein to Etta.

Is this thanking her for being a patron and saying, "Come back, the hat's still out"? Exactly.

And also asking, "Where is she now?" because he misses the patronage.

How much did they pay Picasso for them? Hardly anything.

We can tell from their account books that they were just pennies.

Really very little. They were spending much more on lace and dresses and the, er...

charges for their hotel room or meals. Their value now, roughly?

Enormous. Enormous? Are we talking millions here?

Well...yes, some of them.

Let's see the others. We don't like to reduce the things to... monetary terms, but...

I'm fascinated by the contrast... I know. ..with what they picked up then. It's extraordinary.

This is one of the most... I have to stop myself saying the most important or remarkable every time

because they're so extraordinary. This Self Portrait from 1906,

first, the paper's quite textured. You see the lines?

And the medium coming off the pen is quite dry, so it has a kind of brittle look.

It's almost violent, really. Yeah, yes.

Expressionistic. Powerful, isn't it? Quite simply very powerful.

And the concentration on these Cubist-like eyes here... Yes.

A sort of sadness there. Yeah, that's true. Melancholy.

Exactly.

This is a drawing for another painting.

This young adolescent is about 16 years old.

He hung around the Bateau Lavoir and a lot of artists' studios. They were fascinated with him.

He was a prostitute and a petty criminal

and at this time, Picasso called his group of friends a band of criminals.

He liked that slightly antisocial thing.

Characters like him presumably were around the Bateau Lavoir when Etta and Claribel went upstairs. Yes.

Certainly Etta seemed to take on a different kind of character

when she went to Paris. It was what she expected - to see things you wouldn't see at home. Yes.

She was quite bold in looking for experiences. Yes.

It's not the first American to feel liberated when they get out of provincial America.

Mary Cassatt escaping to Paris or Whistler. Yes.

It certainly was the way she wanted to start collecting. She felt hesitant about buying a painting.

She bought an early Matisse, but she didn't buy a serious Picasso until much later.

It would have taken Gertrude and Etta almost two hours to walk from Picasso's studio in Montmartre

across the river to the Steins' home on the Left Bank.

Their apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus was a regular rendezvous. Not just for the sisters,

but for many Americans wanting an introduction to the modern-art scene in Paris.

They had an extraordinary collection that no-one else would collect then

and they had an extraordinary mind,

which would be the theoretical mind who did seminars and described what was on the walls. That's Leo's mind.

Then there was the socialite of the group, Gertrude Stein, who'd invite in a ritual every Friday evening

young American artists to join the dinner which would have taken place beforehand with Matisse and Picasso.

The younger artists could at the same time look at the works on the wall, listen to Leo Stein

and rub shoulders with Picasso and Matisse, which was unique.

Informal, it's very American, you know. Nowhere in France would you find such a way of gathering,

young and older, well-known and emerging,

to be offered to young American painters who were studying in Paris

and who were much more privileged than their French counterparts because French kids wouldn't be able

to have dinner with Picasso at the time.

And the Cone sisters,

they come very much into both the tradition of German-Jews coming back to Europe

and the tradition of feminist philanthropy in the United States.

So it's a real crossover.

I think that if France was really the biological mother of Modernism -

that's where Modernism was born and Post-Impressionism was born and Cubism was born, and so on -

these very unique people could select these works of art and bring it to the United States

and would make it, would turn the United States, into the foster mother of Modernism.

France would be the biological mother, but the United States would be the foster mother.

# Oh, babe, maybe some day... #

Seduced by the delights of Paris, Etta stayed on with Gertrude,

wining, dining and visiting galleries.

Around the Steins' dinner table, she met new artists,

including Matisse, from whom she bought two drawings and a watercolour.

She was having the time of her life.

But when her brother Moses, head of the Cone family, fell seriously ill,

Etta knew that her place was at his bedside.

Moses's death brought to an end a chapter in Etta's life -

a brief flowering of independence in Paris when she started as a typist for Gertrude.

It was in letters to Gertrude Stein that she expressed the intensity of her grief over the death.

"I'm having a hard fight," she wrote, "and for a time, I really wished I could have died.

"You cannot possibly know how I adored and worshipped my brother.

"I'm striving with all my willpower to overcome

"a devilishly emotional nature that has been stirred to its depths."

She poured out her emotional state, which was very serious -

she said she wanted to die, to lay down and never wake up. She was mortally wounded for a long time.

I mean years, not months.

She wrote to Gertrude. She expressed all these feelings to Gertrude.

They were so close.

Then Gertrude met Alice B Toklas in 1907.

By 1908, they were living together.

And so she had a life partner.

And there's crystal-clear evidence that Alice was very jealous of Etta.

And Etta was certainly very jealous of Alice. They did not like one another one bit.

And...there was competition.

Etta said she felt sad that Alice had taken her place,

was typing novels...Stein's work.

It was tense, it was difficult, and the communication between them deteriorated.

Some years earlier, Claribel had moved to Germany to continue her medical studies.

She was living in Munich when the First World War broke out.

Her brothers arranged for her to leave, but she said she couldn't be inconvenienced,

cos she couldn't get a private compartment

or baggage space for her 13 trunks.

She wasn't about to leave Germany just because of a World War.

During the beginning of the war,

her day's list of things to do that day was - buy red buttons,

write a $1,000 cheque for antiques, tip the room maid 50 cents.

She was completely unaware of what was happening around her.

I think she even enjoyed the pageantry of troops marching through the streets.

Claribel was there - a woman, a Jew,

an American - she shouldn't have been in Munich alone at that time.

She'd been cut off from her funds and borrowed money from relatives,

but by 1919, those funds were scare as well.

She wrote Etta that she remembered digging through some trunks because she was without shoes

and found a pair she'd abandoned years before and was so thrilled because they had soles.

She'd been wearing shoes with holes.

The war rattled Claribel in a way that nothing else had.

The years after the war, when there was such chaos in Munich,

she never really had time for people anyway, but when she saw what people did to each other on the streets,

killing each other, the constant violence, the gunfire,

she retreats from people even more.

MACHINE-GUN FIRE

Whether it's textiles or lace or art, she finds her comfort in things, not people.

She wrote to Etta that what bothers her most about people were their personalities - they got in her way.

Whereas things were a continual comfort.

Luckily for Claribel, the Cone cotton business had made a fortune clothing the US army in the war.

She headed back to Baltimore on a trans-Atlantic liner,

booking three state rooms for herself and her luggage.

Claribel and Etta, now reunited, had serious money to spend

on their passion for art.

In 1922, after a nine-year absence,

they returned to the dealers and auction houses of Paris.

In 1922, Etta and Claribel arrived here and embarked on a shopping frenzy.

After the spree was over, seven crates were sent back to Baltimore, including 57 works of art -

6 paintings by Matisse, 4 bronzes, 22 lithographs, 4 pieces by Picasso and a Renoir etching.

Etta wrote to Gertrude that she and Claribel "were drowning in things".

As an apprentice collector myself, I decided to do my own research into the art market

and find out how much it's changed since Claribel and Etta were here.

Americans now wanting to start a collection, would they go first to New York now?

You have to decide what sort of collection you want to make.

Old master or...modern art.

Old master, they would still come to Europe. Yes. That's interesting.

But if, like Etta... She was introduced to Picasso and Matisse who was not that well known then.

No, because she was in Paris and the artists were in Paris. Everything was in Paris.

The problem for modern art is that you cannot meet all the artists. There are too many.

So, well...it's difficult because there are so many artists now

and different ways of making art - videos, installations and so on.

It's true that, in the '20s, if you wanted to meet Surrealist artists,

you came to one place and you could see them all.

That's right. And now you're saying you just can't do it.

Is there a difference between collectors 100 years ago and now?

Certainly. How's that? A big difference.

First of all, because there were much fewer collectors

who had a lot of possibilities and could buy extensively if they wanted to.

They came to the few dealers and bought each time a lot of paintings.

Now, the situation is different

because only of the prices and of the rarity of the works of art.

And I think that makes a big difference. If you buy a work of art for $40 million,

you don't buy ten the same day!

Many collectors are like Casanovas. They love to attract the most beautiful objects on their walls.

And sometimes they get tired of it too. Exactly!

Then they sell it. And like Casanova and Don Juan,

it's always the... The new. ..the new object which you love the best.

The new things on offer here are scenes of Venice,

which really caught my eye.

What I love in each of those is the sky, the play of light

and the different times of day in the cemetery, which is quite sombre in the last one.

It seems joyful in the first two, although it is a cemetery,

but the last one feels as though it's a dark and doomy atmosphere. And it changes so much in a day.

'The artist was on hand to massage my curiosity.'

Do you paint them in situ? Yes, always en plein air, on the spot.

I try to paint in one session.

I'm a firm believer, as far as I'm concerned, in one-session painting.

The ones you have over there... Do they call those things...palini?

Pali. Pali. Pali.

Um... So I like those as well. Where does that leave me?

I don't want to take them all, but... We need to get you started on the process of reflection.

'The artist having massaged my curiosity, the dealer was on hand to massage my wallet.'

But for someone like myself starting off, to me it's a bit like Etta, I suppose,

it's not an intellectual decision, it's really what I find just...

Which attracts you most? Well...first it was those three,

now I look from here at the pali, I like those three very much. What we could do

is place them next to each other. The more you talk about it, my hands are going damp,

I'm feeling definite excitement. That's exactly the excitement.

'There's no doubt about it, buying art is a painful pleasure.

'As I settled for the trio of pali, I couldn't help wondering how Etta and Claribel EVER made decisions.

'Maybe that's why they bought so much.'

Lots of people try to parse out who was the greater collector - Claribel or Etta.

The two world masterpieces in the collection

are Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire, and Matisse's Blue Nude.

They are just in that top 1% of all art works ever created.

Claribel bought both paintings.

So if you say, "All right,

"these two paintings, if there's a nuclear holocaust, these are the two that you try to save,"

then Claribel becomes THE crucial collector.

Oh, yes. This one here looks rather good. What's that one there?

This is Claribel and Etta on deckchairs on the Statendam. The famous Statendam.

Claribel looks like Queen Victoria there. That was in 1928,

the year before Claribel died.

We have the last letter she wrote to Aunt Etta. Two months before she died. Yeah.

She says, "My dear sister Etta, last night I had a pain in my heart, the first one I ever had.

"For that reason and in due of the fact that I have reached the age

"at which the eldest members of our family die, I am writing this letter to say goodbye."

She was then... 65. 65.

She was right. The older generation died comparatively young.

"When one begins to grow feeble, one is a useless member of society.

"So I go without regret. You see, I am only one of the many millions who have passed on.

"I love my family very much, although I am too lazy to express it." That's typical Claribel.

She felt no real remorse at dying. She said her time had come. She had no regrets.

She said - typically Claribel also - "Make sure to buy things for the relatives in my name."

She was still shopping on the day she thought she was dying.

She and Etta were alone in Lausanne

where they'd spent their summers together when Paris became too difficult for Claribel to manoeuvre.

On that day, even though Claribel hadn't purchased any art at all that summer, she bought a painting.

And it was this Courbet. And it's very atypical. It's very muted colours, dark greens,

almost no light. It's a stream you can go into as the viewer,

but there's no light at the end and there's no way out.

That was the day she died, almost as if Claribel could see the end

and this was sort of the period or the final mark on her collection.

One result of Claribel's death was to bring Etta and Matisse closer together.

In 1930, Matisse, now world famous, stayed with Etta in Baltimore on his way to Philadelphia

and was impressed by his collection at the Marlborough Apartments.

Whilst in America, Matisse received two important commissions. One from Etta to do a portrait of Claribel -

and he offered to do Etta as well - the other was from Albert Barnes to produce this enormous mural.

He finished the mural more quickly than the portraits. His problem was

that he wanted the portraits to be more than just portraits.

He wanted to reveal the characters of two women he knew well,

but whose essence he found so difficult to pin down.

Etta was remarkable for the extent, you know, having met him in 1906 and beginning to collect then,

all the way through the '30s, she was a kind of constant supporter.

And I think he felt very comfortable with her. She was interested in the family, knew his daughter,

er, and on one of her trips to Nice,

he arranged a tableau vivant

where he had the same model dress up in the dress, posed her in the chair in front of the window

and then Etta came in and saw this and she was really delighted...

that Matisse had taken such trouble. A big surprise. Something personal to bring the picture alive for her.

Towards the end of the 1920s, he had a kind of block.

He just needed to change and move on to something else.

He'd really worked the ideas of nudes in an interior or odalisques

as far as he could at that point.

So what one sees in the course of this painting is that the picture is really so much about this struggle,

about metamorphosis, really, and change.

You can see that the shape of the dress changed.

It was at one point out here

and has been kind of narrowed down.

The dress has become like a chrysalis almost. Mm-hm.

Springing out. Exactly. Sort of organic.

You can see a line. The dress evidently slipped down here.

You can see the line across there.

So he leaves all that. He could have covered all that up.

He's dated it, I notice,

1929 to 1931. Right.

He acknowledges it's been through so many changes. Its all there.

One senses that Etta would have understood because of her interest in process and the way artists work.

The fact that she collected sculpture and drawings -

so many works that show the struggle and metamorphosis

that Matisse's works go through.

Matisse really campaigned to get Etta to buy the Pink Nude by sending her all these photographs.

So when she visited Nice and saw it complete, she could hardly say no.

Etta looked forward to her regular trips to Nice, where Matisse, now world famous, always had time

to see her and make a sale.

# Sur la plage abandonee

# Coquillages et crustaces

# Qui l'eut cru? Deplore la perte de l'ete

# Qui depuis s'en est alle... #

They met for the last time in 1938. After that, age, ill health and another war kept them apart.

But new paintings still crossed the water -

pictures filled with Mediterranean light and colour he so brilliantly captured, and she eagerly acquired.

There's a magical feeling in places where he painted. The beauty that attracted Etta still draws crowds,

and the house where he worked in the war is now a haven for amateur artists seeking the Matisse muse.

I always think that Matisse still lives here.

Always, when I came in the house, I think that maybe...

he will tell me, "Hello, how are you today?" You know? Yeah. It's funny,

but it's like that. Every morning, I say, "Hello, Matisse."

THEY LAUGH I suppose...

some of the views you get when you open the windows here,

are exactly what he painted, so you can actually be where he stood and be him. Yes, that's true.

You can feel the atmosphere... Yeah. ..in the house.

So when you paint, you're always thinking about Matisse. Yeah.

Ah!

It's turning out to be rather...

Yes, slightly more Raoul Dufy than I intended.

It's got those little lines. It's just... The thing is to start.

It's like jumping into a cold swimming pool. Exactly.

I feel nervous and tight because I'm not used to expressing myself.

I've just got to go in and... whoosh! There we are. There!

That's it, you see. Good. Yeah.

I think the abstract movement helps me a lot. SHE LAUGHS

I think I'm the only person who's painted the television aerial.

Just as Etta stopped collecting Picasso when he turned to Cubism,

she never purchased any of Matisse's late abstract work

of the kind so strikingly present in the decoration of this chapel in Vence.

What's clear to me is that although Etta loved lustrous colours,

it was figurative art she wanted on her walls.

Matisse never saw Etta again.

But his grandson Claude remembers meeting her when his grandmother took him to America.

All these years,

Etta Cone, one way or another, had been feasted by the French.

Even if she picked up the tab most of the time,

still it was French food, it was French quality of life, it was this...

And when we walked into the apartment,

which was a typical 19th-century apartment -

very dark, dark wood, er...

..Chinese objects -

but it was absolutely covered from ceiling to floor with paintings.

And I can remember my grandmother, who was also,

er...in her good 70s,

and practically on her knees,

in a dark corridor, saying,

"Madame Matisse, I don't know if you remember the little Derain we got in 1907.

"Well, it's here and it's so beautiful."

And just, you know, sort of crawling along...this unbelievable collection

and later on, Etta Cone said to my grandmother,

"Mme Matisse, all these years, I've been given the best French food.

"This time, I'd like to give you the best American food."

So she made her a real American, old-fashioned meal,

that was tomatoes and corn and squash and sweet potatoes.

And it was very, very good, of course.

Etta got the idea for a catalogue of their work.

It turned into a 400-page book. It weighed a good seven to ten pounds. There were 127 plates.

She had 1,000 copies printed up which she dispatched like doves all over the world.

Can you imagine getting on your doorstep a 400-page book,

and opening each page and seeing Matisse, Picasso, Renoir, Gauguin, Courbet.

People must have wondered, "Where has this been hiding?"

And from that moment on, Etta was inundated by visits from people

from London, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago -

curators who thought they'd like to have this as part of their museum.

BIRDS SING

Michael, Etta came here a lot during her later years.

Back then, it was called Owl's Roost. Yeah.

I guess Laura and Julius Cone bought this in the early 1940s...

Another branch of the Cone family? Yes, Julius Cone... Look at that!

Yeah, step out on the porch and look at the view you get. Oh, yes!

How extraordinary!

They're all wooded, those mountains stretching away - thick wood, cloud drifting. That's beautiful.

This is a collector's view. Exactly so.

Any other houses or buildings? There's one there, but basically...

It's one of the things that brought people to Blowing Rock, and certainly Etta.

And of course, just a few miles from Flat Top Mountain. Yeah.

I'm just imagining Etta here, you know, last days of her life.

This is just the perfect place. You can't argue with that. I wouldn't mind quietly slipping away here.

Etta was peaceful when she died in her sleep at the age of 78 in this house in Blowing Rock.

She died knowing the collection of Dr Claribel and Miss Etta would be looked after.

Despite all the tempting offers, she decided to give the collection to the Museum of Art...

back home in Baltimore.

When Etta died, a Pinkerton guard was stationed at the door, probably wondering what he was protecting.

They found everything was there as if the sisters were there. Flowers were still in vases.

Claribel had been dead 20 years. Her clothes still hung in the closets.

Their apartment after they died was as if waiting for them to come back,

as if they would open the door and walk in.

Etta and Claribel embodied the new confidence of America.

The Cones, once Kahns, returned to a Europe their parents had left and which was about to destroy itself

and captured and preserved some of their great works of art.

Some dismiss Dr Claribel and Etta as shoppers who became collectors.

But aren't all collectors shoppers in one sense or another?

Beneath the Victorian appearances, they were remarkably modern women, independent and open-minded.

Their collection owed nothing to power or greed, and everything to their delight in art and beauty.

# Y'a de la joie!

# Bonjour, bonjour, les hirondelles Y'a de la joie!

# Dans le ciel par dessus les toits Y'a de la joie!

# Et du soleil dans les ruelles Y'a de la joie!

# Partout, y'a de la joie!

# Tout le jour Mon coeur bat, chavire et chancelle

# C'est l'amour qui vient avec je ne sais quoi, c'est l'amour

# Bonjour, bonjour, les demoiselles Y'a de la joie!

# Partout, y'a de la joie! #