Work by Bradford artist William Shackleton to go on display (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Work by Bradford artist William Shackleton to go on display

9:00am Saturday 9th February 2013 in News By Dolores Cowburn, Bradford Chief Reporter

Bradford was last night one of 30 venues in the UK to host a display to mark the opening of a new online collection of oil paintings which saw a picture by renowned Bradford artist William Shackleton also go on public show for the first time since 1972.

The projection in City Park comes days after it won its seventh design award.

The series of events will celebrate the completion of Your Paintings, a website for the entire UK national collection of oil paintings created by the BBC in partnership with the Public Catalogue Foundation.

William Shackleton’s painting A Love Lyric, thought to have been inspired by Robert Browning’s poem O Lyric Love, has gone on display at Cartwright Hall gallery in Lister Park, Bradford.

The painting by the artist, born in 1872, depicts a couple in a romantic setting and was last on public show at an event marking the centenary of his birth.

Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe, the Council’s executive member responsible for culture, said: “We have some real artistic gems in our Bradford art collections. This is a great opportunity to encourage more people to visit the William Shackleton painting at Cartwright Hall and see what other great art is housed there as well.”

The will be on display until Monday, April 1, and visitors to can also take a free postcard of the painting.

A Love Lyric will also be the subject of a ‘Big Canvas pop-up activity’, during which people will be invited to recreate it on a mass scale. The artwork will be split into a number of squares, each one of which will be painted and then placed together in a large frame to recreate the masterpiece. The event will be held later this month.

Helen Farrar, a relative of Mr Shackleton, said: “My family are absolutely thrilled that the BBC is choosing to feature William Shackleton in its Your Paintings initiative.

“Bradford, his birthplace and city that delivered his first formal art training, remained important to him throughout his life. As a regular visitor to Cartwright Hall himself, I’m sure he would be proud to be remembered by his home town.”

The Your Paintings website features 211,861 paintings from 191 museums, galleries and public buildings in Yorkshire. They span more than 600 years of art history but, due to limitations of exhibition space, 80 per cent of the works are normally held in storage and not easily visible to members of the public.

For more information visit bbc.co.uk/yourpaintings.