Cursiter paintings snapped up at Edinburgh auction

Three paintings by Orcadian artist Stanley Cursiter went under the hammer at Bonhams, in Edinburgh, yesterday, Thursday.

An oil painting entitled Summer Afternoon, painted by Mr Cursiter in 1923, sold for £31,250.

Another, entitled Little Grey Town, sold for £5,625.

An early watercolor, from 1909, featuring the Ayre Mills in Kirkwall, sold for £1,500.

Stanley Cursiter was born in Kirkwall on April 29,1887. He went on to become King George VI’s and the present Queen’s painter and limner in Scotland – a prestigious position he held for nearly thirty years, from 1948 until his death in 1976.

Educated at Kirkwall Grammar School, in 1948 he was made a Freeman of Kirkwall and awarded the CBE.