Free The Art of Acquiring: A Portrait of Etta and Claribel Cone by Mary Gabriel Page A

arrival on the scene.
    The more likely truth concerning the winter of 1906 was that Etta, then in the midst of a passionate friendship with Gertrude, would have done anything to be of service to her.
    As Gertrude moved out from Leo's shadow, she glowed with a strange and powerful presence that surely would have won Etta's heart if it had not already been vanquished. Ernest Hemingway later described Gertrude's sexual attraction as rare and strong. He said it remained “unequivocal” when she was sixty and he just nineteen.
    Gertrude once wrote, “It is one of the peculiarities of American womanhood that the body of a coquette often encloses the soul of a prude and the angular form of a spinster is possessed by a nature of the tropics.” The tightly laced Etta Cone was that spinster.

    In March 1906, Claribel returned to Paris for a visit and found her younger sister's apartment on the rue Madame now dotted with bizarre images, as if Etta had become a member of the same strange cult that captured the Steins. Etta must have struggled to describe adequately the places she had been and the things she had seen. But Claribel soon saw one of them for herself—Gertrude and Etta took Claribel to visit Picasso at the Bâteau Lavoir.
    The elder Cone sister had spent the preceding years in Frankfurt doing research in pathology. As a doctor, she had had but one patient and that, she said, was quite enough. She spent the rest of her medical career at the microscope.
    Life's tawdry side held little attraction for Claribel. The Paris she knew was the Louvre, the Comédie Française, and the splendrous neighborhood just south of the Boulevard Montparnasse. Now she would descend into a sort of distorted mirror universe. It was the opposite of everything she thoughtacceptable, but one her younger sister found romantic.
    Picasso was still working on Gertrude's portrait, and neither he nor his model seemed to mind that the project was taking so long. On arriving with Etta and Gertrude at the rue Ravignan, Claribel was assaulted by the same smells and feelings that had once bothered Etta but did so no longer. Etta had grown used to the Bâteau Lavoir and the strange people who congregated there.
    There was Max Jacob, who looked debauched in his ratty suit, thin tie, and top hat. His room smelled of smoke, paraffin, incense, old furniture, ether, and cocaine.
    Other artists with studios in the building, and the women who were either “models” or “wives” (but likely neither), roamed the halls with dazed looks that might have derived from hashish, opium, or absinthe. The artist Claribel was taken to see—young enough to be her son—was very much a part of that opiated subculture.
    Picasso spoke little English, and because Claribel spoke neither Spanish nor French, what little communication they had was likely through Gertrude, who somehow had a rich exchange with Picasso that transcended language.
    During this period, Picasso's most frequent costume was a one-piece blue suit—the type worn by Parisian laborers. His hair, though strictly parted, was disheveled. His hands were perpetually stained. He appeared more street urchin than ground-breaking artist—more boy than man.
    By contrast, Claribel was regal. Her soft-waved hair created a crown around her head. Her body, broad and erect, was draped in fine fabric that reached the floor. She held her head aloft in evident self-regard, and let a slight smile play on her lips. At the age of forty, she was someone to be reckoned with and, standing amid the debris of his wretched art studio, the twenty-three-year-old Picasso immediately recognizedher for what she was. He called her “The Empress.”
    Following the introductions, Gertrude and the sisters handed the artist the comic pages from an American newspaper that they had saved for him. Gertrude situated herself in a one-armed chair for her portrait session.
    Claribel and Etta began sifting through drawings strewn on the floor, setting