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 Terence
Cuneo, who died in January I996 was famous as a painter of State
occasions, the military, portraits and wildlife.
He
came
from an artistic family.
His
father, Cyrus, was a skilled Italian-American illustrator, and his mother
had received artistic training in Paris. Cuneo’s
childhood scribblings show that an interest in railways is more than just a
recurring theme and they reveal the undeniable seeds of potential mastery. Cuneo’s
childhood scribblings show that an interest in railways is more than just a
recurring theme and they reveal the undeniable seeds of potential mastery.
At
the age of I 7, Cuneo became an art student at the Chelsea Polytechnic. In the
early 1930s, Cuneo moved with his mother to a new house in London’s Bedford
Park.As luck would have it, a branch line crossed the road next to the garden.
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Every
day a goods train trundled down the branch, and it took but a short time for
Cuneo to become acquainted with the drivers and to be invited onto the
locomotive footplate. Before long Cuneo had his first experience of driving a
steam locomotive. As with most people who have ever done so, Cuneo found the
experience unforgettable.
During
the Second World War, Cuneo was called up to join the Royal Corps of
Signals.Whilst on leave from the army in 1942 Cuneo had made a sketch of an
Essex water mill and later exhibited it at the London Sketch Club Annual
Exhibition. For some reason the sketch caught the eye of the Public Relations
Officer of the London & North Eastern Railway. Perhaps this picture could
form the basis of a railway poster.
For
the next 20 years Cuneo’s work was seen by millions of people on railway
stations all over the country. Posters displaying Cuneo’s work became part of
the railway landscape, and British Railways made full use of Cuneo’s ability
to depict everything from locomotives and bridges to the Scottish countryside.
Cuneo
was given the freedom to compose his posters within very broad guidelines, and
his judgement was impeccable. One of the major aspects of the job was to select
a suitable position from which to sketch the chosen subject. Once this had been
done, detailed sketches were produced which included notes showing colours and
shades.These sketches and notes were then taken back to the studio to be worked
up into the finished painting.
Bridges
featured in a number of Cuneo’s posters for British Railways, as well as in
private commissions. These proved to be some of the most physically demanding
works he ever produced. Cuneo made all the preparatory sketches for these works
on location, often in very inhospitable conditions.As a civil engineering
artist, Cuneo was as accurate when portraying bridges as he was with
locomotives. To celebrate the I 50th Anniversary of the Great Western Railway in
1985, Royal Mail selected five Cuneo paintings of famous named trains for use on
commemorative stamps. Two of the stamps depicted Great Western trains, with one
each for the Southern, London Midland & Scottish, and London & North
Eastern Railways.
Cuneo’s
artistic ability enabled him to capture the spirit of railways in any country. He
had a great affection for the railways of France, and often visited the
locomotive shed at Boulogne to record the impressive engines kept there. Another
source of inspiration was the railway-operated steamers that sailed between
Dover and Calais. It
was well known that his favourite locomotive was the Museum’s Duchess of
Hamilton, a locomotive that he painted on a number of occasions. Cuneo’s most
notable working visit to the Museum was in 1987 when he prepared sketches of
Mallard for a painting commemorating the 50th anniversary of the locomotive’s
record-breaking run.
Terence Cuneo was
able to produce an accurate yet creative painting of diesel and electric trains
with the same flair as he recorded the more immediately expressive steam
locomotives. During his career he recorded nearly fifty years of change on the
railways portraying transitions from steam to diesel and diesel to electric
traction. At the time of his death, Cuneo was working on a painting of a Channel
Tunnel Shuttle train being loaded.
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