Cyrus Cuneo: Eva listened aghast, then, sank against the wall sobbing desperately .... - on Art WW I

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Cyrus Cuneo:
Eva listened aghast, then, sank against the wall sobbing desperately ....

Framed (ref: 5039)

Signed, inscribed on the reverse,No 2 illustration for Blind Mans Buff, (Pall Mall Magazine).
Oil on panel, 12 1/2 x 8 1/4 in. (32 x 21 cm.)

Tags: Cyrus Cuneo oil panel



In a white gesso frame with silver inner slip.

This image, typical of Cuneo's painting en grisaille for illustrations to popular magazines such as Pall Mall,  was also reproduced in Newnes Sixpenny Novel The Witch's Head, p. 142 (120) with the caption Eva listened aghast, then, sank against the wall sobbing desperately ...

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.

 


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