'The Seekers': Little Terns in flight over the Sea

Shackleton was enormously influenced by Sir Peter Scott who encouraged him both as a bird watcher and painter. Scott wrote in his foreward to Shackleton's book Tidelines, 1951, that the chief characteristic of the book was 'the enthusiasm of its painter-author, an enthusiasm which is infectious, light-hearted, ever young and wholly captivating'. As a painter Shackleton is a master of the marine environment. Nicholas Hammond in Twentieth Century Wildlife Artists, London, 1986, p.181, writes 'Shackleton was a master of painting the sea. His large oil paintings of towering seas above which flies a tiny petrel are magnificent'.