Cyrus Cuneo

Cyrus Cincinato Cuneo ROI (1879-1916), known as Ciro, was an American-born English visual artist, best known for painting.

He was born into an Italian American family of artists and musicians. His parents Giovanni (John) and Annie Cuneo, his brothers Rinaldo (1877-1939) and Egisto (1890-1972), and his son Terence Cuneo (1907-1996) also became artists.

The family lived on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco's Italian American neighbourhood of North Beach. Cuneo's first published drawings appeared in an Italian newspaper when he was 16, and for the next three years he worked for the San Francisco Press.

Cuneo trained as a boxer, becoming the fly-weight champion at the Olympic Club in San Francisco and his prize money, together with earnings from spare-time jobs, and the sale of sketches allowed him to travel to Paris to learn painting. The Times reported that he left San Francisco for Paris with £40 in his pocket.

Cuneo began his studies in art while still living in San Francisco, at the Mark Hopkins Art Institute. When he travelled to Paris in 1896, he joined the Colarossi’s studio and trained under Whistler, eventually becoming his head student. Cuneo set up an afternoon sketching school with Edith Somerville (1858-1949). Teaching sketching and boxing helped Cuneo to support himself in Paris. The Times said that Cuneo had a fine physique and was a notable athlete, and as a boxer was famous not only on the Pacific slope, but also in Paris and London.

Cuneo was living at 9, Rue Campagne, Première Montparnasse, Paris, in 1900 when he first exhibited at the Royal Academy. He showed two works in that year, both of them illustrations from King Lear by Shakespeare. Cunoe also exhibited at other venues.

Cuneo married fellow artist Nellie Tenison (1869-1953) in London on 20 October 1903.

Cuneo was elected ROI in 1908. Cuneo was a successful artist in terms of earning a living. During World War One, he painted war subjects in London and the sale by auction of one of his paintings paid for two motor ambulances for the front.

Cuneo got blood poisoning after being accidentally scratched with a hat-pin at a dance. He died on 23 July 1916.