Alfred Wallis

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Alfred Wallis (1855 – 19 August 1942) was a Cornish fisherman and painter.

Life and work

Charles and Jane Wallis, Alfred's parents, were born in Cornwall and moved to Devonport, Devon, in 1850 to find jobs. Alfred and his brother Charles were born in Devonport. The family returned to Penzance later in life after Jane Wallis died. Alfred was apprenticed to a basket maker after leaving school and then became a merchant service mariner in the 1870s. He sailed on schooners across the North Atlantic between Penzance and Newfoundland.

Wallis married Susan Ward in St Mary's Church, Penzance, in 1876, when he was 20 and his wife was 41 years old. He became her five children's stepfather. On the first days of his marriage, he continued to work as a deep-sea fisherman, which allowed him to receive a good salary. Alfred moved to Penzance's local fishing and labour after the death of his two infant children.

In 1890, the family moved to St Ives, Cornwall, where he established himself as a marine store dealer, procuring scrap iron, sails, wire, and other items. "Wallis, Alfred, Marine Stores Dealer" closed in 1912, and Alfred continued to work with odd jobs and worked for a local antiques dealer, Mr Armour, which gave us some insight into the world of objets d'art.

Wallis took up painting following his wife's death in 1922, as he later told Jim Ede, "for business." He was self-taught, and he never had an art lesson.

His paintings are a classic example of nave art; perspective is often dismissed, and an object's size is often based on its relative importance in the context; a number of his works have a resemblance to early maps. Wallis created seascapes from memory, in large part because of the fact that sails were being replaced by steamships. "What use To Bee out of my memory for which we may never see again" Wallis used what was inexpensive, mainly painting on cardboard and using a limited palette of paints retrieved from ship chandlers, as he put it.

Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood arrived in 1928, a few years after starting painting, and established an artist colony. They were delighted to find Wallis and applauded his direct approach to image-making. "His paintings were never 'paintings' but real life," Nicholson said later. In the 1930s, Wallis was introduced to a circle of some of Britain's most influential artists.

The influence, on the other hand, was one way; Wallis continued to paint as he had always done; Wallis' art, according to Nicholson, "is something that has arisen out of the Cornish seas and earth and that will last forever."

Wallis was introduced to Jim Ede, who worked in London, through Nicholson and Wood. Despite this ferocious interest, Wallis sold few paintings and continued to live in poverty until he died in Penzance's Madron workhouse. He is buried in Barnoon cemetery overlooking the beach and the Tate St Ives gallery. The tomb is covered by an elaborate gravestone made from tiles by potter Bernard Leach depicting a tiny mariner at the foot of a massive lighthouse, a popular motif in Wallis' paintings.

Wallis' neighbors resentted his fame, as well as his belief that he was unethical. He wrote: "I wrote a letter to Ede in one of his last letters:.

At Tate St Ives and Kettle's Yard in Cambridge (Jim Ede's home), examples of Wallis' paintings can be seen. "Alfred Wallis Rediscovered" exhibition at Kettle's Yard in October 2020 opened in October.

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