Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1849 Laurenzana, Italy

Died: 1925 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1865

Other name/s: Gaetano Giuseppe Faostino Meo

Biography

Model, painter and mosaicist Gaetano Meo was born Gaetano Giuseppe Faustino Meo in Laurenzana, near Potenza, Italy in 1849. He was the son of an impoverished shepherd of Greek descent. As a child, Meo became an accomplished harp player and, in their early teens, he and his brother joined a circus, touring southern Italy as musicians. After reaching Naples, they ran away from the circus and headed north on foot towards France. Their journey, starting in the spring of 1864 and ending in the autumn of 1865, eventually led them to Paris, where they supported themselves by playing music. Gaetano also supplemented their meagre income by modelling for artists.

The brothers then decided to travel further north to Liverpool in England, aiming to catch a steamer to the USA to join the gold rush. Lacking passports, they were smuggled aboard a ship bound for England by a friendly ship's captain. While his brother managed to reach the USA, Meo settled in London, arriving as an illegal immigrant around 1865. Speaking very little English, he sought out Italian restaurants where he could to his harp, avoiding arrest and deportation by the police for busking. Still under 18, he fell in love with an Irish girl, Agnes Morton, whom he married in 1866, despite her parents' disapproval. The couple had six children. Meo later acquired a modelling job at the Heatherley School of Art in Newman Street. There, Jewish Pre-Raphaelite painter, Simeon Solomon (see Ben Uri Collection) introduced him to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, and Henry Holiday. Due to his swarthy Mediterranean features, classic profile, and curly hair, Meo was in great demand as a model for the leading pre-Raphaelite painters until the 1880s. During that period, it was customary for male models to pose in a loincloth, but Meo was comfortable with posing nude. He modelled for numerous pre-Raphaelite paintings, including Edward Burne-Jones's Phyllis and Demophoön (1870) and Love Among the Ruins (1893-1894).

Meo was particularly close to William Blake Richmond, a friendship that lasted nearly 50 years. He became Richmond's principal model and studio assistant, and even acted as his business manager in negotiations with clients. Eventually, Richmond taught him to paint, and by the 1870s, Meo had become an accomplished landscape painter, exhibiting at the Royal Academy of Arts and selling his paintings to Rossetti, Holiday, and Richmond himself. Henry Holiday also played a crucial role in Meo's career. As the chief designer for stained-glass makers James Powell & Sons, Holiday employed Meo from 1875 to work on cartoons for neo-Gothic church windows. In the 1880s, likely sponsored by Holiday, Meo returned to Italy to study the mosaics of Ravenna, Venice, Sicily, and Rome. When Holiday established his own workshop for mosaics, Meo joined him, and in 1888, thanks to the sponsorship of Holiday and Richmond, Meo became a British citizen.

Meo's friendship with Richmond and his knowledge of mosaics proved provident. In 1891, Richmond was commissioned for the mosaic decoration of St Paul's Cathedral's apse and choir. He chose James Powell & Sons to provide the tesserae and selected 19 craftsmen, asking Meo to assist in directing them. This commission established Meo's reputation, and in the early 1900s, he and his team of mosaicists, now comprising five Englishmen and one Venetian, were contracted long-term by Sir Ernest Debenham to decorate his department stores. From designs by architect Halsey Ricardo, Meo realized the lavish mosaic decoration in the great domed hall of Debenham's new house in Holland Park in 1912, depicting subjects from classical mythology and portraits of the Debenhams and their eight children, against a backdrop of sinuous plant patterns. In 1913, Meo was commissioned to execute the mosaics (from designs by architect Robert Weir Schultz), in St Andrew's Chapel in Westminster Cathedral, funded by the Fourth Marquess of Bute. The chapel opened in December 1915, and while there was some criticism of the marbles' 'coldness,' there was nothing but praise for Meo. In 1916, executing his own designs, he began working on mosaic panels for the Church of St. John the Baptist in Clayton, Bradford, a project that lasted until 1918. The Meos moved several times within London, but remained in Hampstead the longest. Following his wife's death in 1921, Meo created a grave marker in Hampstead Cemetery, featuring a glass mosaic of the Madonna and Child, restored in 2018. Gaetano Meo died in London, England in 1925. He is also buried in Hampstead Cemetery. In the UK public domain his works are held at the Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre in London and Towner Eastbourne, while archival documents are held at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

Related books

Patrick Rogers, 'Cathedral Mosaicists - Gaetano Meo', Oremus: Westminster Cathedral Magazine, No. 217, 2016, pp. 14-15
Simon Reynolds, 'Gaetano Meo', in Jill Berk Jiminez, ed., Dictionary of Artists' Models (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2001), pp. 368-370
Stephen Wildman and John Christian, 'Catalogue - 48. Phyllis and Demophoön', Edward Burne-Jones, Victorian Artist-Dreamer, exh. cat. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1998), pp. 136-138
Alison Smith, The Victorian Nude: Sexuality, Morality, and Art (Manchester University Press, 1996)
Madge Garland, 'Fair Face in Many Guises: Gaetano Meo (1850-1925)', Country Life, Vol. 175, March 8, 1984, pp. 604-605

Public collections

Royal Academy of Arts

Selected exhibitions

Exhibition of Decorative Art (group show), Royal Academy, London (1923)
Royal Academy: 149th Exhibition (group show), Royal Academy of Arts, London (1917)
Royal Academy: 148th Exhibition (group show), Royal Academy of Arts, London (1916)
Royal Academy: 145th Exhibition (group show), Royal Academy of Arts, London (1913)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Gaetano Meo]