Nellie Marion Tenison Cuneo (26 August 186923 May 1953) was an illustrator and painter who trained in London and Paris. She was married to the American painter and illustrator Cyrus Cuneo (18 June 187923 July 1916) and their youngest son was the English painter Terence Cuneo RGI FGRA(1 November 19073 January 1996), known for using a mouse as his signature. Early life Tenison was born in Hammersmith, London, on 25 August 1869. She was the second child of her parents, Irish doctor Edward Tenison Ryan Tenison (c. 183022 December 1904) and his second wife, Frances Sally Testelin (13 March 1842fourth quarter of 1912). Edward's first wife Fanny Hutton died between the birth of their third son Alfred on 25 October 1865 and his baptism on 1 February 1866, leaving three sons, Edward (c.1860), Arthur (born c.1861), Alfred (born c. 1866), who were half-brothers to Tenison. Her full brother Adolf Heron , studied at Cambridge, trained as a doctor and settled at Hayle, Cornwall, in 1947. Education and marriage The 1881 census shows Tenison (age 11) as the only child at home with her parents, apparently under the care of Annie Florence Robinson (age 24), a governess. She studied at the Chiswick School of Art from 18841886 and then, without the support of her family, at Sir Arthur Stockdale Cope's School of Art in South Kensington. By the time of the 1891 census, the Tenisons had moved to 215 Uxbridge Road, which was to remain the family both for Tenison's parents, and for Tenison's husband and children, Cyrus Cuneo's death in 1916. She then worked as a freelance illustrator, on publications like the Ludgate Magazine. By 1899 she had saved up enough money to go to Paris to study art, and she enrolled in the Académie Colarossi to train under Whistler, where she met Cyrus Cuneo. They returned to London to marry on in the last quarter of 1903. As Cuneo was an American citizen, Tenison ceased to be a British Subject on her marriage under the UK's 1870 Naturalisation Act. She did not automatically gain US citizenship by marriage, as this was subject to her being eligible to naturalization (as determined by emigration officials whenever she landed in the United States, certain races and immoral persons, etc. being excluded). Thus, British women who married aliens from 1870 to 1933, when the law changed could become stateless persons. Tenison may not