Summer 2007, Kirkwall

An Island Farm Stronsay by Stanley Cursiter.

THIS WAS long overdue. Cursiter’s own book on Scottish art is a revelation; his voice is intimate, assured, informed, passionate. He engages with Scottishness, the condition of art and the way it shapes a nation.

He was born in1887, shared space with Edwin Muir and Robert Rendall, saw his way through two Wars,and died in 1976, one of those Orcadians we don’t quite know what to do with, because they are ‘posh’, and yet paint the place like no non-Orcadian possibly could.

Pamela Beasant’s new book is called a life of the artist, but it’s not really – that will take more work, more mining of the fine letters, cartoons, essays. No, this publication is a celebration of the Retrospective of Cursiter’s work held this summer at the Museum and Community Centre in Kirkwall.

It was a rare chance to see many works from galleries and private collections together, to enjoy the sheer technical dexterity – lacquer bowls you want to drink out of, flowers you want to smell, women you want to engage in conversation.

The book catches the idiosyncracies and the essence of the man. If he had had time, he would have painted more. Because he was an off-the-wall thinker, he didn’t. He couldn’t help getting involved. If he saw a house he thought about renovation. If he saw a map he thought about better topographical detail. If there was a War, he had to oversee a thousand draughtsmen.

He was fatally attracted to Scottish glitz, a kind of early Alex Salmond. He favoured spats and hats. His Queen’s Limner’s paintings – the Chookie Embra ‘n Lizzie outside St Magnus Cathedral, flanked by some slightly confused members of the local Boys’ Brigade (1960), or receiving the Honours of Scotland in St Giles, full of ermine and pages in tights – are peinlich [embarrassing].

He missed out on a knighthood – would have liked one. He thought it was some anti-Scottish bias at work, wanted the Establishment to greet him with open arms and pat him on the head.

But the essential Cursiter, the one who wasn’t accepting honours and downing sherry, whom Beasant and her essayists capture, was a chaotic kind of man – pulled by Orkney, by architecture, by grandchildren. An endless enthusiast, a curator, a carer about detail, a renaissance man, with all the distractions which that involves.

The quality of the reproduction in this publication sensitively takes you through the artistic journey. He’s at his truest when he captures the light in Orkney landscape, what it does to the sea. He’s at his most vulnerable when he flirts with Futurism and Vorticism; at his most technically achieved in portraiture.

‘The Fair Isle Jumper’ (1923) tells volumes; it’s Ramsay’s inheritance – the douce Scots face staring out, unadorned except by what she’s made herself, her hat and jumper.

The best gift to the Retrospective of this important and influential Orcadian makkar is this book. The images quide you through a painter’s growth; the text illumines, raises questions, gives context. The essays allow a glimpse into the private man.

When he died, Cursiter bequeathed to my father – another Orkney marine painter – a tile he’d found in Italy. It says:

‘aqui vive un pinctor.’

Fine epitaph. Best when he painted the Orkney landscape. Fine book, paying heed to this.

(Stanley Cursiter – a life of the artist, by Pamela Beasant, is published by Orkney Museums and Heritage. ISBN 978 -954886275-2)

© Morag MacInnes, 2007