ABOUT CYRUS

Cyrus Cuneo was born in San Francisco, California into a large
Italian-American family. Both his brothers, Rinaldo and Egisto

were artists.

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Even as a boy Cyrus, or ‘Ciro’ as he was always known, had one ambition – to get to
Europe and study art in Paris. Ciro knew that fulfilment of this ambition must come
entirely from his own efforts. He jealously guarded every cent he could gain.
 

Whilst still at school he took on a paper round, but his principle source of income was

in staging shows and plays in the family stable, charging so many empty bottles for admission, which were later collected and sold.
 

As he grew into his teens he started boxing with his elder brother, Rinaldo, and other
local enthusiasts. His undoubted prowess was soon apparent and small matches were arranged in and around San Francisco, nearly every one of which he won. By the time 

he was nineteen he was Flyweight Champion of the City and with the purse he received, plus his savings, he left to pursue his dream.
 

Once he was in Paris he was just in time to enjoy the last of the Romantic Era. It was

an untidy mixture of draughty garrets, picturesque creatures surrounded by the aroma 

of cabbage and living in a litter of dog-eared portfolios, ‘masterpiece’ canvases and mandolins. Not that this sort of existence was entirely fictitious. Such conditions certainly did exist for the students of the Carlo Rossi Academy, where Ciro studied for nearly four years. Before his second year was out Ciro had become Whistler’s Massier or Head Student and had bolstered his income by giving boxing lessons. These not only paid the rent, but were also responsible for starting the vogue of boxing throughout the Latin Quarter.

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In 1903 Ciro arrived in England and married Nell Tenison, daughter of Dr Ryan Tenison.

She had spent the previous two years also as a student at the Carlo Rossi Academy.

He immediately became inundated with work on magazines and book illustration. 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. In 1910 when King Edward died, Ciro found himself working literally day and night in the office of the Illustrated London News, on spread after spread of the funeral and subsequent George V Coronation drawing. When the 1914 war broke out he moved smoothly onto war subjects. One of his paintings, auctioned in 1915, raised enough to buy two ambulances which went to France, each bearing the inscription “The Cyrus Cuneo Ambulance."

 

One summer’s morning a dove flew into the nursery and settled on the lintel under 

a fanlight. It stayed for most of the day, seeming composed and unafraid. The following afternoon it returned and the housemaid climbed on to a chair, lifted it down and gave it straight to Cyrus who had entered the room at that moment. A few days later, on an excursion to the basement a remark was made to the kitchen maid, “You mark my words Alice, it’s bad luck to ‘ave birds in the ‘ouse. It means death!”
 

It could not have been more than a day or two after this that Cyrus first showed the signs

of blood poisoning – caused by the accidental stab of a hatpin at a dance he attended – which was to kill him. Within six weeks, on the 23rd July 1916, he was dead; thirty-seven years old and at the peak of a brilliant career.
 

*Regrettably much of this material was destroyed when CPR’s offices were burnt down during the Blitz of 1940.