Terence Cuneo and the Lickey Incline

Kolhapur on the Lickey Incline by Terence Cuneo

On 11 July Christie's will be offering Terence Cuneo's painting of the LMS Jubilee 'Kolhapur' on the Lickey Incline in their sale of Victorian & British Impressionist Art.  Patrick Whitehouse, the author, steam railway preservationist and joint presenter of BBC TV's 'Railway Roundabout', commissioned 'The Lickey Incline' directly from the artist in the 1960s.

Patrick Whitehouse bought  'Kolhapur' as a wreck and it was restored at the Tyseley Railway Museum in Birmingham, which he founded. 'Kolaphur' was one of the few locomotives which were powerful enough to take a passenger train up the Lickey Incline without needing assistance from a banking engine.

 

'The Lickey Incline' was painted on site and from a photograph taken by Patrick Whitehouse, a renowned railway photographer. The two children depicted in the lower left corner are Whitehouse’s son and daughter.

Details
Artist: Terence Cuneo (1907-1996)

The Lickey Incline signed and dated ‘“CUNEO”/JUNE ‘68’ (lower left)

oil on canvas 30 x 40 in. (76.2 x 101.7 cm.)

Estimated Price: £50,000-80,000

PROVENANCE:  Patrick Whitehouse, and by descent. Anonymous sale; Christie’s, South Kensington, 11 May 2005, lot 139.