Nell wished to become an artist and without encouragement from her family she earned enough from illustrating work to study art and to keep herself in Paris for a year or two.

Nell was a student at the Carlo Rossi Academy in Paris, where she was taught by the great James McNeil Whistler. It was here she met and fell in love with Cyrus Cuneo. Nell persuaded Cyrus to come to London to realise his outstanding potential to become an artist.

Nell and Cyrus were married in England in 1903