(Enlarged Photo)

Peace Parade, Hyde Park 1926

Egg Tempera on board

Shackleton was a figure apart in the history of 20th C British art, producing idiosyncratic, almost uncategorisable work of great originality and beauty. One categorisation that Shackleton did manage to apply to some of his own work was 'poetic realism' and this deeply strange picture of a League of Nations rally - featuring Sybil Thorndike as the Goddess Minerva - in Hyde Park fits that description, with the participants represented not as real people but as mythological figures in a cartoon tapestry. Shackleton lived in Parsons Green for 40 years but only very rarely drew inspiration from his surroundings, which are more often works of pure imagination. His works can be found at the Tate Gallery and in the Burne-Jones/Cecil French Bequest collection..