Stanley Cursiter 1887-1976

Edinburgh, Aitken Dott & Sons.

Royal Scottish Academy, 1958, no. 112

Paintings of Orkney in the twentieth century are synonymous with the work of Stanley Cursiter. He was born and educated in Kirkwall, Orkney. After leaving school his intention was to become an architect, however, after his father's death he was unable to cover the tuition fees and instead went to a firm of commercial printers on a five-year apprenticeship as a designer. Here he mastered the art of lithography and commercial printing.  He then studied at the Edinburgh College of art, where his success as a student won him a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in South Kensington. Whilst in London Cursiter became close friends to Roger Fry and Clive Bell. With them he arranged that the society of Scottish artists in December 1913 include in its annual exhibition a number of invited works by Gaugin, Herbin, Serusier, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Severini and Mattisse as well as works by John Duncan Fergusson and Duncan Grant. The futurist part of this exhibition influenced Stanley Cursiter's own work and in 1913 he produced a small group of experimental pictures in Edinburgh, amongst them The Sensation of Crossing the Street- the West End, Edinburgh.  However, the Scottish Colourists were to be the major inspiration in the direction of Cursiters painting and he took forward their ideals in his landscapes of Orkney.  Cursiter was an important and key figure in the Scottish Arts and became Director of the National Gallery of Scotland from 1930 to 1948. In 1948 he was appointed King’s painter and Limner in Scotland and retired to Orkney where he devoted himself to landscape painting and recording Orcadian life. His biography on Peploe; An Intimate Memoir of an Artist and his Work and his book Scottish Art published in 1949, are both classics of Scottish art history.