# Stanley Cursiter artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/stanley-cursiter/
Profile generated: 2026-08-24T19:13:37.560Z
Quality: medium confidence, adequate sources

## Artist identity

- Nationality: Scottish
- Movements: Futurism, Scottish modern art
- Common media: Painting, Printmaking, Lithography

## About Stanley Cursiter

Stanley Cursiter (1887–1976) was a Scottish painter, printmaker, museum administrator, and writer born in Kirkwall, Orkney. After an apprenticeship as a lithographer, he studied at Edinburgh College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. His practice ranged across landscapes, portraits, and figure subjects, while a notable group of 1913 paintings engaged with Futurist ideas about representing movement—an unusual experiment among British artists of the period. Cursiter also became an influential museum professional. He worked at the National Gallery of Scotland as keeper and, from 1930 to 1948, as director, advocating for a dedicated Scottish national gallery of modern art. Collectors therefore encounter his name in several contexts: as a Scottish modern artist, a portrait and landscape painter, a printmaker, and a figure in the development of Scotland's national collections. Auction records may span these different bodies of work, making artistic phase and work type important points of comparison.

## Common works and media

Works encountered in collection and auction contexts may include landscape paintings, portraits, figure compositions, and prints. Cursiter's 1913 Futurist-inspired paintings form a particularly distinctive historical group because they explore methods of representing movement. Objects should be classified by medium, subject, date, dimensions, inscriptions, and attribution rather than being compared solely by artist name.

## Market and appraisal context

Cursiter's market should be considered work by work rather than through a single headline result. Public records may group conventional landscapes, portraits, and figure subjects alongside prints and the comparatively distinctive Futurist-inspired paintings of 1913. Useful comparisons should match medium, subject, date, dimensions, and type of work as closely as possible. Condition, provenance, exhibition history, inscriptions, and the strength of attribution should be checked in the individual lot record before drawing appraisal conclusions. The collected sources confirm an Appraisily auction-record page, but they do not supply a major auction-house biography or detailed sale results. Any valuation should therefore use current comparable lots and verified realized prices when those records are available.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine researched artist identity data with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available. Individual objects still require verification of attribution, condition, provenance, medium, and dimensions.

## Sources

- Art UK: https://artuk.org/discover/artists/cursiter-stanley-18871976
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/57525717/
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7599553
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500001351
- British Museum: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG24220
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Cursiter
- Appraisily: https://appraisily.com/artist/stanley-cursiter/