Lot 97
STANLEY CURSITER C.B.E., R.S.A., R.S.W (SCOTTISH 1887-1976) §
LOBSTER FISHERMEN, ROUSAY
Estimate: £10,000 - £15,000
Auction: 26 September 2024 From 18:00 BST
Description
Signed and dated 1944, oil on canvas
Dimensions
101.5cm x 127cm (40in x 50in)
Provenance
W. G. Barbour Bequest, 1944.
Footnote
Titled ‘A Rock-Bound Coast’ in Illustrated Catalogue of Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture in the Collections of Paisley Corporation and Paisley Art Institute, 1948.
Exhibited:
Hankyu Department Store, Umeda Main Store, Osaka, Japan, The Beautiful Landscape of Scotland, 11-16 November 1983; touring to Tenmaya Department Store, Okayama Main Store, Okayama, Japan, 18-23 November 1983.
Literature:
A Paisley Legacy: The Paisley Art Institute Collection, Centenaries Catalogue, Paisley, 2015, p.44.
Note updated 19 September 2024:
Cursiter’s devotion to his native Orkney endured throughout his life. In his 1974 autobiography Looking Back, he recalled: ‘My practice was to work as hard as I could [during his early years in Edinburgh] over the winter months so as to make as much money as possible. Then, in the summer, I would go to Orkney, or Shetland, for two or three months, or for as long as the money lasted. There I would paint landscapes, sea-scapes, or cliff scenes.’
This work is believed to date to the year following Cursiter’s resignation from an 18 year tenure as Director of the National Galleries of Scotland. By this time the artist and his wife had acquired a house in Orkney where they would sojourn to paint the island’s dramatic coastal cliffs.
This superb oil depicts fishermen at work under the cliffs of Rousay, a small island around 3km north of the Orkney mainland. Cursiter made a near-identical watercolour of the same composition, which is illustrated on page 82 of Pamela Beasant’s illustrated biography Stanley Cursiter: A Life of the Artist (Orkney Islands Council, 2007).
