SOLDConstructing a stage set, circa 1910
Framed (ref: 5038)
Signed
Oil on panel, 12 1/4 x 8 in. (31 x 20 cm.)
SOLDSigned
Oil on panel, 12 1/4 x 8 in. (31 x 20 cm.)
In a black and white cassetta frame.
Cyrus Cuneo was born in the United States, of a large Italian family
including two brothers who became artists. He was also the father of
Terence Cuneo the distinguished British Artist
Even as a boy
Cyrus, or 'Ciro' as he was always known, had one ambition - to get to
Europe and study art in Paris. As he grew into his teens he started
boxing - by the time he was nineteen he was a flyweight champion and
with the purse he received was able to travel to Paris.
Once he
was in Paris he enrolled at the Carlo Rossi Academy, where he studied
for four years. In his second year he become Whistler's massier, or
head student. To pay his rent hegave boxing lessons and was thereby
responsible for starting the vogue of boxing throughout the Latin
Quarter.
In 1903 Ciro arrived in England and married Nell Tenison
a fellow student at the Carlo Rossi Academy. He immediately became
highly successful as an illustrator working on magazines and books.
After this he went to Canada to carry out an important series of
commissions for the Canadian Pacific Railway. He then resumed his career
in England working mostly for the Illustrated London News. When the
1914 war broke out he moved onto war subjects, His war paintings were
widely reproduced - one canvas, auctioned in 1915, raised enough to buy
two ambulances which went to France, each bearing the inscription "The
Cyrus Cuneo Ambulance".
Cyrus died tragically young - in July
1916 - from blood poisoning, thirty-seven years old and at the peak of a
brilliant career. Regrettably much of his work was destroyed when
CPR's offices were burnt down during the Blitz of 1940.
