became an Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1927, a full Academician in 1937 and served as Secretary to the Academy from 1953 to 1955. He was the first Secretary of the Royal Fine Art Commission for Scotland and was appointed Keeper of the National Galleries of Scotland in 1930, a post he held until 1948. That same year, he was granted the Freedom of Kirkwall and was appointed as the King's (later to be Queen's) Painter and Limner for Scotland, a position he held until his death. He painted watercolour landscapes of East Lothian, Orkney and Shetland, and designed Saint Rognvald Chapel in St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall. He is particularly renowned for his portraits and is considered amongst the finest Scottish portraitists of the 20th Century. He painted 'Her Majesty The Queen receiving the Honours of Scotland' in the High Kirk of St Giles in 1953, this painting hangs on the Great Stair, Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh. Aberdeen University awarded him an honorary doctorate (LLD) in 1959. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1938, a rare accolade for an artist. His proposers were James Pickering Kendall, Leonard Dobbin, James Watt, and Sir Ernest Wedderburn. Cursiter was influential in the campaign to create a Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. He died in Stromness on 22 April 1976. Family He married Phylliss Hourston on 14 October 1916. His older sister Jessie Cursiter (1881-1916) is buried in Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh. Selected works Rain on Princes Street, 1913 The Regatta, 1913 Villefranche,circa 1920 The Fair Isle Jumper, 1923 Geo at Yesnaby and Brough of Bigging, 1929 Window – Burnstane House, circa 1935 The Old Store, Stromness, 1950 The Honours of Scotland, 1954 Landscape in the Orkney Islands, 1954 References External links Biography on the Gazetteer for Scotland Some examples of Cursiter's work in his Modernist style 1887 births 1976 deaths People from Kirkwall Alumni of the Edinburgh College of Art 20th-century Scottish painters Scottish male painters Scottish portrait painters Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Cameronians officers Royal Scottish Academicians Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Scottish curators Cameronians soldiers Scottish cartographers Scottish civil servants Scottish watercolourists Fellows of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland Presidents of the Society of Scottish Artists 20th-century Scottish male artists