Matisse in the Cone Collection: The Poetics of Vision

The Cone sisters, Claribel and Etta, acquired their first Matisse in 1906 and, during the next four decades, went on to form one of the world's great collections of his art. The Cone Collection not only contains major works from every phase of Matisse's long career but also reflects the sisters' special interest in his Nice period, when a new complexity of form and psychology entered the ever intense surface allure of his paintings.

Matisse in the Cone Collection breaks new ground by offering the first scholarly exploration of this exceptional group of works, all donated to the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1950. Doreen Bolger's Foreword traces the Cone sisters' early association with Leo and Gertrude Stein, their growing friendship with Matisse, and the building of their collection. An essay by Jack Flam guides readers through the sisters' collection of Matisse's art and, simultaneously, charts the artist's development from his Neo-Impressionist work of the 1890s to his late style of the 1940s, which is marked by the use of cut-paper and an increasingly linear language of form.

The publication of this book will coincide with the reopening of the Cone Wing of the Baltimore Museum of Art after a renovation designed to make the galleries reflect the period in which the art was first made and collected.

Jack Flam is Distinguished Professor of Art and Art History at Brooklyn College and the Graduate School of the University of New York. He has published numerous studies of Matisse as well as other artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His Matisse: The Man and His Art, 1869–1918 (1986) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Doreen Bolger is Director of the Baltimore Museum of Art.