Cuneo Evening Star painting sells to US bidder for £65,000
AN ORIGINAL Terence Cuneo painting of BR Standard 9F 2-10-0 No. 92220 Evening Star sold to a US bidder for £65,000 at auction on March 10.
The work was commissioned by a printing firm for its 1964 calendar, and was so well received at the time that the company produced a limited edition of 2500 prints, which was so successful that copies are still in demand today.
Before its auction, the painting, which went under the hammer at a Sworders’ books and maps sale in Stansted, Essex, caught the attention of fine art collectors in the UK and overseas, as well as lovers of railway subjects and the many admirers of London-born Cuneo’s work.
Auctioneer Alexander Hallett said: “There was considerable interest across the board, including commission and telephone bidders, and the realisation reflected the quality of the painting.”the painting was accompanied by a photograph of Cuneo and the painting with the vendor’s father, John Haworth, the last managing director of the printing firm James Haworth & Co, of London and Leicester, who commissioned the artist to produce the work.
Mouse incident
Cuneo, who died in 1996 aged 88, related a tale about the painting in a book about the history of James Haworth & Co published in 1989.
The artist usually included a mouse in his work tucked away and almost impossible to find, and the little rodent he included in the 9F painting nearly caused an international security incident.
One of the prints was hanging on the cabin wall of a Union-castle Line officer, and he, his captain, and an Army friend were searching the painting for the mouse, but couldn’t find it, so in desperation the captain told his officer to cable John Haworth asking where it was.
Haworth replied in his cable “Up telegraph pole first right,” but instead of the message being delivered to the ship that was docked in Cape Town, it was relayed to the South African security services as being highly suspicious, probably in code, resulting in two security men boarding the vessel and demanding to see the captain.
The captain had forgotten about the search for the mouse and was bemused and angered, but on remembering why the cable was sent, he led the security men to the officer’s cabin. As Cuneo wrote in the book: “He flung wide the door and, with the air of a conjuror producing a rabbit from a hat, pointed dramatically at the print. ‘There you are gentlemen, ‘Up telegraph pole first right’ – and there’s the mouse!”
Malcolm Root, one of three Fellows of the Guild of Railway Artists, said the painting inspired him as a teenager to become a professional railway artist.
“I saw a print of it on the wall of a museum near Weston-super-mare in the mid-1960s, and I thought you couldn’t fail to be impressed by the blocks of colour and sense of power,” he recalled.
Inspiration
“I was interested in railways and painting, and it made me try the same thing when I got home. My parents bought me a copy of the print the following Christmas, which I still have, and further inspiration came from the painting being featured on the cover of the Triang Hornby 1971 model railway catalogue.”
The £65,000 realisation of the painting excludes buyer’s premium of 25% (+ VAT).