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Lot 219

SHACKLETON (ERNEST HENRY)
Letter signed ("E.H. Shackleton") to "Mr. [Charles] Buchel", apologising that a "rush of work has prevented me from going up to you" but suggesting that "I'll come for a final sitting directly after Xmas", Marlborough Club, Pall Mall, Dec. 21, 1919

14 September 2021, 13:00 BST
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £22,750 inc. premium

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SHACKLETON (ERNEST HENRY)

Letter signed ("E.H. Shackleton") to "Mr. [Charles] Buchel", apologising that a "rush of work has prevented me from going up to you" but suggesting that "I'll come for a final sitting directly after Xmas", 1 page with integral blank leaf (with lower portion torn away), light old fold and dusting, 8vo, Marlborough Club, Pall Mall, Dec. 21, 1919

Footnotes

Shackleton writing to the artist Charles Buchel to organise a sitting for his portrait, presumably the oil now held by the National Gallery of Ireland. Having been demobilised in March, by December 1919 Shackleton had been "reduced to lecturing on the Endurance... [appearing] twice daily at the Philarmonic Hall in Great Portland Street. It was drudgery and worse... for often he faced half empty houses" (Roland Huntford, Shackleton, 1985). That South, his record of the expedition, was also published in this month to a good reception, together with Buchel's commission to paint his portrait, suggests however that Shackleton's extraordinary achievements in the Antarctic had not been forgotten at this time.

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