Lot 49: AR Stanley Cursiter CBE RSA RSW (British, 1887-1976) Apple green 100 x 126 cm. (39 3/8 x 49 5/8 in.)

Apple green
signed and dated 'Stanley Cursiter 1925' (lower left)
oil on canvas
100 x 126 cm. (39 3/8 x 49 5/8 in.)
in original gilt exhibition frame

Footnotes

• Provenance
  Purchased by the owner's father in the 1920s
  Thence by descent
  
  Exhibited
  London, The Royal Academy, 1925, cat.no.183
  Bristol, 1925 (label fragments verso)
  The Royal Glasgow Institute, 1926, cat.no.287 (£300)
  Edinburgh, The Royal Scottish Academy, 1929, cat.no.250
  
  This rediscovered picture is one of Cursiter's most significant exhibition pieces, and features his favoured model Poppy Low at his home in Royal Circus, Edinburgh, the year he took up the post as Keeper of the National Galleries of Scotland. The sheet music would have belonged to his wife Phyllis, an accomplished violinist.
  The price of £300 was among his most expensive exhibited pictures to date, equal only to House of Cards (Tankerness Museum, Orkney). One Summer's Day (£315) is said to have been destroyed by the artist. Other major figure paintings of the period included Dolce far Niente (Paisley Museum) and Girl with a Pewter Jug (Hunterian Museum, Glasgow)