Matisse, Picasso
and the School of Paris:

Reviewed by Renee Wright

Widely touted as a "once-in-a-lifetime" exhibition, the North Carolina Museum of Art's new show, Matisse, Picasso and the School of Paris, does indeed take the breath away.

Here you'll find masterpieces by the most famous names in art: Matisse, Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet, Degas, and one exquisite Cezanne. All are from the collection of the richly endowed Baltimore Museum of Art.

And most, though not all, are the gifts of two ladies with strong ties to North Carolina - Claribel and Etta Cone, heirs to one of the great manufacturing fortunes. Denim woven at the Cone Mills in Greensboro and other Carolina towns paid for a lot of this art.

The Cone sisters, who never married, lived liberated lifestyles in the early years of the 20th century. Claribel became a doctor, and the sisters frequently traveled to France in the years before W.W.I.

A hothouse atmosphere consumed Paris at the time. Young artists from all over the world gathered there and from the cauldron came master works of painting, sculpture and literature that established entirely new standards of art.

The melting pot drew Americans as well. While some, such as Hemingway, made their marks as artists, others, including the Cone sisters, played the equally important role of patron.

The image of Gertrude Stein sits, appropriately, in the center of the North Carolina Museum of Art exhibit, represented by a Felix Valloton portrait and an immense bronze head by Jacques Lipchitz, who saw her as "a massive, inscrutable Buddha." Stein formed the essential connection between artists and patrons that kept some of the greatest talents of the Paris School, Picasso among them, from starving during their early "bohemian" years.

The Cone sisters appear in the exhibit as well - a charcoal sketch of Etta by Matisse and a pencil drawing of Claribel by Picasso who called her "the Empress."

Etta and Claribel used to pick up sketches from the floor of Picasso's studio, insisting on paying him for them. They got many drawings for the equivalent of $2.

The Cones lost interest in Picasso's work as it became more abstract, but remained lifetime fans of Matisse's sensuous, fluid style. The exhibit includes one of the final pictures bought by Etta on her European journeys, Matisse's Purple Robe and Anemones.

This flowing style especially lent itself to nudes; three monumental bronze women, including one by Matisse, dominate the fifth gallery. The Cones were especially fond of nudes and rumors around Paris at the time whispered that the sisters occasionally posed for the sketches they later purchased.

Don't Miss: The North Carolina Museum of Art screens a documentary, The Ladies who Loved Matisse by Michael Palin, a member of Monty Python, continuously during the run of the Matisse, Picasso exhibit in the museum's video theater. Admission to the film is free.

Visit the website of the North Carolina Museum of Art for times, dates and charges for the special exhibit and many lectures and programs planned around it.

The Humber Series of free lectures, usually on a Sunday afternoon, offers several fascinating topics, including:

• Friday, November 5 "Inventing Tahiti: Nature, Culture and the Fading Paradise in Gauguin's Art" 7 p.m. Free

• Sunday, December 12 “Matisse versus Picasso” 2 p.m. Free

North Carolina Talking Points

Born in Baltimore, Claribel and Etta spent time during their youths in North Carolina, enjoying their Uncle Moses' mansion just outside Blowing Rock. Today the Moses Cone estate is a national park. You can hike, ride horseback or cross-country ski on the estate's old carriage roads. The mansion itself now houses a shop operated by the Southern Highland Craft Guild.

[for more on visiting the Moses Cone estate, see our section The Best of Blowing Rock]

Although the Cones gave the majority of their collections to the Baltimore Museum of Art, the sisters did not forget the state so closely connected with their family fortunes. The Weatherspoon Museum of Art at Greensboro's Women's College, today the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, received a small but significant collection of Matisse sketches, many of them nudes.

The Cone Collection at the Weatherspoon includes 67 Matisse prints and 6 Matisse bronzes, plus works by Picasso, Felix Valloton, Raoul Dufy and John Graham.

• In addition to the Cone Collection on permanent display, the Weatherspoon hosts an exhibit featuring still more Matisse drawings from the Baltimore Museum of Art, A Legacy in Line: Matisse and American Drawing, through Dec. 12, 2004.
• The Weatherspoon on the campus of UNC-Greensboro is open Tuesday-Sunday; admission and parking are free.

At left: The Coiffure, by Pablo Picasso, 1923, from the Cone Collection of the Weatherspoon Museum of Art.

Meanwhile: A portion of the Weatherspoon's Collection travels to yet another part of the state. The Louise Wells Cameron Museum, in Wilmington, NC, hosts Matisse and More, 25 works on paper by Matisse and Picasso rarely seen outside of the Weatherspoon.

The exhibit at the Cameron runs Nov. 5, 2004 – Jan. 2, 2005. Preview Reception Thursday, Dec. 2, 2004 7-9 p.m.

Henri Matisse, Purple Robe and Anemones, 1937,
oil on canvas, The Baltimore Museum of Art,
The Cone Collection © 2004 Succession H. Matisse,
Paris/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

The website of the Baltimore Museum of Art features a Virtual Tour of its Cone Collection (housed in the newly renovated Cone Wing) as well as a video of the Cone sisters' Baltimore apartment where the collection originally covered the walls from floor to ceiling..

SUGGESTED READING

The Art of Acquiring: A Portrait of Etta and Claribel Cone

Matisse in the Cone Collection:
The Poetics of Vision

Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company