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Show DAILY HERALD Sunday, August 24, 2008 What motivates ci Perhaps this is the natural order wkh many collectors. '. Perhaps they dont their passion in a The Cone sisters Of Bal: timore, Claribel and Etta, way that translates readily to .. might have seemed eccentric, speech or writing; The maddening circumto some of their contempo- - : stance wkh the Cones is that, raries, not only because they when she was a girl EDen continued to dress like staid and proper Victorians well Hirschland knew her great-auinto the 20th century but also Etta well and traveled because they collected avant-gard- e wkh her in France. EUen recalls that they often talked art. ; about art rr but the book does Anyone who has sew. the Matisse-ric- h Cone collection at not report what Etta might the Bakimore Museum of Art have said. w ill realize that the sisters As coauthor Nancy Who otherwise lived the most .. Ramage explained when I .' conventional of spinster lives asked her about this, her were more aesthetically ad- mother was still a teenager venturous than 99 percent of during those trips, and just beAmericans who wknessed the coming interested in art. Etta : birth of the modern world. might not have addressed the Like Albert C Barnes, a :. point. Furthermore, Ramage added, I suspect she Etta contemporary of younger ' didn't herself know the ansister Etta, they enthusiast!- ' ' caDy patronized the two most swer" :. Such a black hole at the prominent European collectPicasso and Matisse, heart of major-leagu- e ing also appears in another along wkh other progressive new book on the subject, Old artists such as Cezanne and. Masters, New World (ViGauguin. Mainly, though, they con-- . king), fay Cynthia Sakzman. centrated on Matisse. Of the years ago, Sakzman proapproximately 3,000 objects .: duced a fascinating account of how a famous portrak by in the Cone collection in Baltimore, about 500 are by him, Vincent van Gogh passed the largest group of Matisse .. through the hands of various works anywhere. owners.1 Ever since l first visited Portrak of Dr. Cachet" laid bare the convoluted twists the collection years ago, Ive wondered how and why two and turns of the international Victorian spinsters from a .' art market, which in the case , mer- of Gachet involved confiscaweahhy but tion of the painting by the Na-zi-s. cantile family made such an Gachet" was particularly astonishing conceptual leap,' The question of what ignkes ' fascinating because after the. such a passion for collecting : painting's last owner died, k the public art never fails to fascinate. ' disappeared from ' When a new biography, arena., Sakzman has achieved The Cone Sisters of Baki- - .. more: Collecting at Full Tik something similar wkh Old Masters." .which relates how (Northwestern University fress), came into my hands, I wealthy Americans developed thought the mystery might at a taste for prime ' last be resolved. The authors, European pictures between 1890 and World War I. the late Ellen E HiTschland : and her daughter, Nancy , The coDectors here are all Hirschland Ramage, both art, titans of the breed, beginning historians, are collateral Cone wkh J. Pierpont Morgan and descendants. including Henry day Frick, They have produced a lively Beqjamin Altman, Peter Wid-ene- r, Isabella Stewart Gardand graceful narrative that ner and Henry Gl Marquand. fleshes out the contrasting To their, portraks Sakzman personalities of the sisters. adds several influential deal; Claribel, bom in 1864 end .. elder by six years, became a .' ers such as Joseph Duveen and Otto Gutekunst. physician and medical educaAH the players in this roustor in pathology. She was devoted to German cukure ing history of rich people the first Cones (originally competing for the most valuKahn) came to America from able and historically signifipictures are Germany in the 1840s. Claribel cant familiar, certainly to anyone spoke the language fluently and spent the years of World - who has visked the Frick Coi--. .' WarlinMunkh.' lection, the Morgan Library, She was also slightly more - . the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum or the Metropolitan daring as a collector. Both Matisses startling Blue Nude" Museum of Art, all of which benefked hugely from their and ks companion, Pink Nude,? were her purchases, largesse; ' Etta (1870-194was more Yet Sakzman revivifies the social, more domestic, and , .. story by showing her readers how these alpha collectors . , more attuned to French culture. It was Francophone Etta, schemed and maneuvered to outsmart the dealers and each not Claribel, who first met Matisse and began acquiring ; other in their feverish quest his work. And k was she wha for the best Rembrandt or the nurtured the collect ion after ' rarest Raphael. Wkh the possible exception, her sister died in 1929. She determined, after much courting of Gardner, and even that ex-- ; by other museums, including : ception must be qualified, they seem to have been motivated the Philadelphia Museum of Art, thaj k would stay in Balprimarily by the chase and the intense competkion to grab as timore. The book set me straight on many fabulous paintings as . two long-helmisconceptions. they could. I had believed that Claribel was the dominant collector that Etta was a supporting player. Not sa As the authors report, Etta began collecting first ami did so actively for nearly 50 years. I also had assumed that the sisters collected jointly. Wrong again. Each had her own collation until Claribel miI died, when Etta inherited her ll:M Kim MCI 13547311. . holdings and worked assiduTM HCm iMS IW MOTHS H ously to AD gaps wkh an eye 1144 MS 4 45 TM ICN 7754:55 IMMUHtHT nUMHcOOM to leaving the collection to a 13.5 11:711331 Edward Sozanskl U . i INC PHMOEL4HIA INQUIRER intri-lectuali- ! nt . , 'V . . : V 1 t 'r W'. . ' . . Vs Post NEU4YNE SBMMNWaihington Sown of the gardens . . it Steepletop, Edna St. Vincent Millay's Austerlitz, N.Y., home where she died in 1950. Wendy Carroll, a landscape architect who it guiding the garden restoration, has been clearing weeds from overgrown areas, and she has ... uncovered many, plantsthat the poet installed decades earlier.,. . . . mod-ernist- . . . . . V Adrian Higgins IH WASHINGTON POST A poet well versed in life '. AUSTERLITZ, N.V.-- The staircase looks innocent enough, three narrow steps up to a landing, turn left, 11 more steps up to the second floor of the sprawling white clapboard farmhouse called Steepletop. But this is a house full of dark memories, and none more spooky than on these stairs. I must warn you not to use the spindles for support,' says Peter Bergman, leading a visitor on a tour. And mind your left shoulder on the overhang at the top." "Interim (an excerpt) The room isasyou left it; your last touch A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself As saintly hallows now each simple thing; V '. Hallows and glorifies, and glows between , The dusts grey fingers like a shielded light. . . ; . . . Under my head till morning; but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and the glass and listen for reply, And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain For unremembered lads that. not again Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. sigh-Upo- tdna SC Vmcant MNay Society Edna St. Vincent Millay, the Are these the stairs, Jazz Aga poet'about 1920. In where ...7 asks the visitor. Theres only one set of stairs the 1920s, when she came in this house, he replies. to AusterlitZj she was one of Sometime in thedawn of the most famous women in the United States, not just an October morning almost six decades ago, poet Edna for her poetry and plays, hut St. Vincent Millay tumbled as a bohemian who predated . '' ; i First Fig". the sexual revolution and. feminism of the f 970s.. down these stairs; landingm a crumpled heap on the lower . landing. Hours, later her farm j manager found her and sunH moned a local doctor, but it was too late. Her neck was broken, and she had died as fiercely and adamantly as she had lived. Her death at 58 extinguished an incandescent chapter in American literature. In the 1920s, ; when she came to Steepletop, Millay was one of the most famous women in the United lesser grand piano far guests, The kitchen still contains the ; modem breakfast bar and counters and appliances that Ladies Home Journal designed and installed for her, after the farm was electrified in the 1940$. Upstairs, Bergman opens some drawers in Edna's bedroom to reveal her collection of . . States, not just for her poetry , and plays, but as a bohemian who predated the sexual revolution and feminism of the 1970s by half a century or more. Everything she did made headlines," said Bergman, ex- ecutive director of the Edna St. . - . . mono-gramme- . . . te . . . . : . . . .. . , the natural world and infused her work wkh it. She grew cultivated plants, had a large .. fruit and vegetable garden, and there was a whole hillside blueber-rie- s field of wild, for the picking. She named the property after a beautiful , pink flowered native spirea '. called steeplebush. In July and August it is joined by a related white flowering spirea that .. creates a cloudlike blanket over the upland meadow above the farmhouse. Lode back from this vantage point, and you have a stunning view of the Berkshires in nearby Massachusetts. Wendy Carroll, a landscape architect who is guiding the ' garden restoration, has been overfrom weeds clearing grown areas, and she has ; ' uncovered many plants that the poet installed decades earlier, including a ring of white flowering peonies below the huge hemlock tree beside the house. She is unearthing the wholesome and inspiring landscape, but on the other side of the house, the character of the gardens shifts from bucolic to bacchanalian. Around a ruined bar, Edna and Eugen built a vine-cla- d pergola and installed a bar, which included a nude painting by Normas husband, the artist Charles Ellis. The bar had come out of a speakeasy that had been closed in Albany, Bergman said. "It's mahogany and has bullet low-bus- h handbags. Another drawer contains her wool socks When she wore clothes Edna wore only the best. Until three years ago, her gowns capes and dresses all hung in the closets here. .. Now they have been cleaned and stored. d Vincent Millay Society. She In the bathroom, her towels still hang. Her was a rock star." Like a lot of rock stars,. makeup is there, on the little Millay had been in a downward vanity. On the table in her pri-valibrary is a yellowed copy spiral foryears before her acof the New York Tones from tual faQ. Addicted to alarming doses of morphine and other April 24, 1950. In every room, it's as if she is still in the next. , drugs, reliant cm wine and gin, The house, you see, passed to . and never far from the next her sister, Nonna Millay Ellis cigarette, she had gone into who lived there until her death physical, emotional and ere- in 1986. Norma kept it as a ative decline in the years leadshrine to Edna. In the 1970s she ing up to her death. Bergman rejects the idea that established the Millay Colony for the Arts and the Edna St. she may have thrown herself Vincent Millay Society; both in down the stairs, and said that she was beginning to write bril- the hopes that her sister's work liantly once more after weaning would never tumble down the herself off the dope and emerg- stairs But in the firmament of ing from the grief of the death of her husband, EugenBoissev-ain- . American literature, perhaps no bright star flickered so soon the year before. Bergman after an artist's death though thinks of her late, sparse and ' her reputation was already ingenious sonnet "Chaos, written before Eugen's death. I will fraying in her last decade. Bergman hopes to change put Chaos into fourteen Bnesf And keep him there; and let him that. A writer with an eclectic career in the arts he began thence escape! If he be lucky. Chaos doesn't reign at. as a child actor, worked for a Steepletop today, but the house decade at the Library & Museum for the Performing Arts itself is in a form of time warp; at Lincoln Center and came to gloomy and worn, yes, but intact and pretty much the way it Steepletop from Arrowhead, looked on Ednas last day. The Herman Melville's historic shades are drawn to protect its house in the Berkshires. belongings from sunlight, and ' Bergman, a youthful 62, this adds to the pallid dinginess was appointed by the Millay of walls that are whitewashed Society's board 18 months but nowhere papered. ago to direct efforts to restore the house and ks garden and But it was this way then. One of her former lovers, grounds along with a series of outbuildings that include the writer and critic Edmund .Wilson, visited her toward , Millay's writing cabin. The the end, in 1948, and he found grounds are open, as is a trail to the Millay family grave site, but the comparison to his earlier the house won't be ready for visit in 1929 to be painful: The couches looked badly worn; the public tours until at least 2010, ' whole place seemed shabby and Bergman says. He works out dim. Boissevain was gray and of a converted garage near the house that doubles as a Millay stooped, and the once aDuring, gift shop and exhibition gaUoy. heartbreaking poet slender and crowned with a mop of red He reckons it will take more hair looked aged and shaky. than $3 million to repair the house and gardens. For now, "There was a look of fright in her bright green eyes. The epi- he is raising funds to pay for a sode is recounted in Nancy Mi- garden historian to prepare a lfords 2001 biography of Millay, cultural landscape report that win document how the garden Savage Beauty. was planted and used by the The house is imbued with Edna from top to bottom. In the Boissevains. Like any poet worth her salt, drawing room, theres her Steinway piano along with second. Millay had deep knowledge of . old-mast-er . My candle bums at both ends; It will hot last the night; ' But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends It gives a lovely light!. - . . non-artist- From an untitled sonnet What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, 1 have forgotten, and what arms have lain . . : . . well-stocke- d . .: The arborvkaesare how tall,, sickly trees, and the sense of. enclosure is lung gone. Big Conifers are pushing menacingly into the hill above the pool, whose water is black-greeopaque and home to brown . n frogs.'. er Up the hill, the pines that Edna planted around the writing cabin to remind her of a Maine childhood have also grown too big. Bergman opens the cabin itself to reveal another timewarp moment. A plain cedar structure, k measures just IQ feet by 17 feet and g contains a stove, two lamps, two small desks . . . . wood-burnin- note-pape- . holes. than any other, damaged ' One watering hole leads to Millay's reputation and led to another: the concrete, spring- - .: her physical decline. The sub-jeof a current exhibition in ' fed swimming pool that the the bam, the poem was writpoetTiad built. AD around, ten in 1942 with Europe under arborvkaes were planted to screen this pleasure garden Hikers jackboot. In Czechoslofrom the mountain road bevakia, a brutal SS general was low. The Boissevains and their ' assassinated, and in retaliation guests would bathe and frolic in the Nazis razed the village of Lidice and killed or interned ks the nude. entire population. Nudity was a big element here, Bergman said. She TT liked the freedom of k. This extended to her weeding, which she recorded in her diary. Got . d . . . museum. ' The Gone Sisters of Baki-- .' more: Collecting at Full Tik is a fascinating narrative that brings the sisters to life 8S individuals. Yet their motiva: tion, beyond an obvious love of art (and where did that ; come from, one wonders), remains elusive. TKERVCCmCIIIS itauTKim a marvelous tan. 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Ednas alarm clock sits on one of the , desks. Her normal routine, Bergman said, was to have breakfast in bed, then work in bed for a while. Get up, do some gardening, take lunch and then retire to the cabin in the afternoon. She would set the alarm dock far so many hours, and then work until it rang. In this shack, she would write such works as Fatal Interview," her collection of sonnets inspired by her affair wkh theyoung poet George DiDon. ' The scar of this encounter like a sword Will lie between me and my troubled lord. Mine the Harvest, a collec- tion published posthumously, was penned in this cabin, as was The Murder of Lidice." Bergman said this work; more . ROW PLATIXRI CWMC WYIMS0NQ1I $01)7441001 ; nGim. NOMsnKxma mnWENGMXMENT uu |