Weatherspoon Art Museum - UNC Greensboro

n.d., pencil, 12 3/16 x 9 in., Gift of Etta and Claribel Cone, 1950

John Graham
(1881-1961)
Untitled
(Woman with Apples)
circa 1920

Claribel and Etta Cone were two of the thirteen children of Herman and Helen Cone, Jewish immigrants who found success in America in the grocery and textile industries. They were raised in Baltimore, where Claribel (1864-1929) earned a medical degree (an "unladylike" ambition in those days) from Woman’s Medical College. Etta (1870-1949) was a dedicated pianist who also managed the Cone household. In 1898, it was Etta’s task to decorate the Cone family’s Victorian-style parlor and she bought five paintings by American Impressionist Theodore Robinson. These were the first acquisition in what would become a lifetime of collecting.

In Paris, the Cone sisters met Pablo Picasso in 1905 and Henri Matisse in 1906. They began to collect their work when modern art was still not widely known, let alone appreciated. Their adventurous spirit in collecting over the next forty years resulted in the formation of one of the most important collections of modern art in America. Eventually, the sisters gave about 3,000 works of art to the Baltimore Art Museum, where they may be seen today.

There is, of course, a second Cone collection, one less well known internationally but certainly treasured here in North Carolina: the Claribel and Etta Cone Collection at the Weatherspoon Art Museum. How did a part of their collection come here, to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro? As mentioned, the Cone family was successful in the textile business, and many of their mills were located in the South. Moses Cone, brother of Claribel and Etta, built a vacation home in North Carolina at Blowing Rock. Etta was a frequent visitor there, as were other members of the Cone family. One such member was Etta’s sister-in-law, Laura Weil (Mrs. Julius) Cone. Laura Cone was a loyal alumna of UNCG. She knew that the Weatherspoon Art Gallery had been established on campus in 1942, and knew, too, that the young organization was struggling to get established. Laura Cone asked her sister-in-law, Etta, if she would consider making a donation of art to the Weatherspoon. In her will dated May 18, 1949, Etta left to the Woman’s College (as it was known then) an astonishing collection of sixty-seven Matisse prints and six Matisse bronzes as well as a large number of modern prints and drawings, including works by Pablo Picasso, Felix Vallaton, Raoul Dufy and John Graham.

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Collection Highlights

Henri Matisse
(1869-1954)
Danseuse reflétée dans la glace
(Dancer Reflected in the Mirror)
1927

Early in his legendary career, Matisse was a leader in the expressive and abstract use of pure color. He became the most identifiable member of the group known as "Les Fauves," the wild beasts. He later developed a luminous and decorative style based on the interpretation of luxuriously sensual subject matter—still life, odalisques, and richly appointed interiors. In addition to his color-rich painting, Matisse made sculptures and prints, including Dancer Reflected in the Mirror.

bronze, numbered 2/10, height 23 1/2 in., Gift of Etta and Claribel Cone, 1950

Henri Matisse
(French, 1869-1954)
Madeleine I
1901

"What I am after, above all, is expression," Matisse once stated. "Expression to my way of thinking does not consist of the passion mirrored upon a human face or betrayed by a violent gesture. The whole arrangement of my picture is expressive. The place occupied by figures or objects, the empty spaces around them, the proportions, everything plays a part." Indeed, Matisse’s Madeleine evinces the artist’s sensitivity to the drama and elegance inherent to the human form.

color lithograph, 27 x 20 1/2 in., Gift of Etta and Claribel Cone, 1950

Raoul Dufy
(1877-1953)
La Grand Baigneuse
(The Large Bather)
c. 1927

In 1905, Raoul Dufy saw Henri Matisse’s painting, Luxe, calme et volupté, and its impact caused him to abandon his own late-Impressionist style of painting and adopt the wild and brilliant color of the Fauves, a word meaning the "wild beasts." Like Matisse, Dufy developed a style of intense color and chose pleasant themes such as harbor scenes and race tracks for subjects. His Large Bather is typical of the lush visual sensuality for which Dufy became famous.

lithograph, 14 15/16 x 11 1/8 in., Gift of Etta and Claribel Cone, 1950

Pablo Picasso
(\1881-1973)
The Coiffure
1923

Picasso’s imagination, versatility, and technical brilliance dominated all artistic developments of the first half of the twentieth century and laid the groundwork for most innovations of the second. He understood classical and academic art and absorbed the powerful expressive possibilities of primitive and folk art. He is perhaps best known to the general public as the creator of Cubism, but his contributions extended into all areas of aesthetic experimentation. He had the power to imbue even the most modest works with his genius, as in The Coiffure where the calm and quiet of classical grandeur are reinterpreted with minimalist modern lines.

Félix Vallotton
(\1865-1925)
Edgar Allen Poe
1894

In 1890, after seeing an exhibition of Japanese prints at the École des Beaux-Arts, Félix Valloton began to build his own collection. The directness and simplicity of these prints affected his own art, as did the influence of Gauguin and symbolist art. The image of Edgar Allen Poe demonstrates the graphic simplicity of Vallotton’s mature style as well as his interest in Poe himself who represented for many artists the supreme ‘mad’ genius whose poetry interpreted the dark mysteries of human nature.

John Graham
(\born Russia, 1881-1961)
Untitled
(Woman with Apples)
circa 1920

John Graham was a figure of immense influence in the early years of American modernism, both as an artist and as a connoisseur. Interested in African art, very knowledgeable about European art, and skilled as both a writer and a speaker, Graham is known to have guided the careers of many American counterparts. This figure drawing is remarkable for its assimilation of modern methods. In it, one sees the eradication of detail in favor of the minimal, rhythmic line. Graham has clearly already thrown in his lot with those artists who defied traditional academic standards and opted for a search for a personal and subjective use of line.