Waves breaking on cliffs, Orkney

Cursiter had been born and educated at Kirkwall in the Orkneys, a remote group of about seventy islands off the north coast of Scotland. In 1948 he retired from the post of Director of the National Galleries of Scotland and returned to the Orkneys, to devote the rest of his life to painting the local scenery and to the conservation of St. Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall.