Alfred Wallis

Alfred Wallis (8 August 1855 – 29 August 1942) was a British artist and marine stores dealer.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref> He began painting at the age of 70, in 1925, using household paint on scraps of cardboard. Having lived by the sea all his life, and no artistic training, he painted port landscapes and shipping scenes in a naïve style.<ref name=":1">Berlin, Sven (1992). Alfred Wallis, Primitive. Bristol: Redcliffe. p. 100</ref> He achieved little commercial success, although his work was championed by progressive artists such as Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood.

Life and work

File:Alfred wallis, st. ives, 1928 ca.jpg

St Ives, Template:Circa 1928

Wallis's father, Charles Wallis, was from Penzance in Cornwall, and his mother, Jane Ellis, was from the Isles of Scilly.<ref name=":0" /> They moved to Devonport, Plymouth, in 1848, to find work and had 13 children there in extremely impoverished conditions.<ref name=":0" /> Alfred and his brother Charles were born there and were the only children to survive. His birth certificate shows he was born on 8 August 1855.<ref name=":0" />

After Wallis's mother Jane died of tuberculosis in 1866, his father returned to Penzance with Wallis and his brother. It is not known if Wallis went to school at Penzance but in 1871, when he was 15, he was apprenticed to a basketmaker, his father's cousin William Wallis.<ref name=":0" /> Alfred then worked on the Mount's Bay fishing fleet out of Newlyn, sailing on distinctive boats called luggers.<ref name=":0" /> He married Susan Ward in St Mary's Church, Penzance, in 1876, when he was 20 and Susan was 41. He became stepfather to her five children, George, Albert, Emily, Jessie and Jacob.

Wallis became a mariner in the Merchant Navy that same year, sailing on schooners across the North Atlantic between Penzance and Newfoundland, which enabled him to earn a good wage.<ref>Heroes of Cornwall - Sheila Bird - 2004</ref> In August 1876 Wallis sailed to a remote part of Labrador called Batteau Harbour, where he spent several months and acted as ship's cook.<ref name=":0" />

Wallis's ship, the Belle Aventure, encountered a storm on the return to Penzance in October 1876 and the crew only survived by jettisoning part of the cargo of dried cod overboard.<ref name=":0" /> Whilst he was away at sea, his first child, Alfred Charles, died at just a few weeks old. On Wallis's return he took up offshore fishing for a year, but following the early death of his second child, Ellen Jane, he switched to labouring in Penzance.<ref name=":0" />

The family moved to St Ives, Cornwall, in 1882 where Wallis ran a marine stores business, buying scrap iron, sails, rope and other items on behalf of his employer Joseph Denley.<ref name=":0" /> In the late 1890s Wallis took over the business himself until 1912, when he and Susan retired to a little terraced house in Back Road West.<ref name=":0" /> Wallis and Susan were staunch followers of the Salvation Army, and Wallis kept busy with odd jobs for a local antiques dealer, Andrew Armour, which provided him with some insight into the world of objets d'art.

Following Susan's death in 1922, Wallis took up painting, as he later told Ben Nicholson, "for company because his wife had died and he did not care for the rest of the company in St Ives".<ref name=":0" /> He was self-taught, and never had an art lesson.<ref name="JotC">Template:Cite episode</ref>

File:Alfred Wallis tomb.jpg

Wallis's grave in St Ives decorated in the style of his paintings by Bernard Leach

His paintings are an example of naïve art; perspective is ignored and an object's scale is often based on its relative importance in the scene, giving many of his paintings a resemblance to early maps. Wallis painted seascapes from memory, in large part because the world of sail and steamships he knew was being replaced by vessels with diesel engines. As he put it, his subjects were "what use To Bee out of my own memery what we may never see again..."<ref name="Letter to H.S. Ede, 6 April 1935">Letter to H.S. Ede, 6 April 1935</ref>

Wallis had little money and used materials that were readily available, mostly painting on cardboard torn from packing boxes and using a limited palette of paint. However, close examination of the different types of cardboard he used, and the specific brand of Peacock & Buchan ships paint he insisted on (bought from the Burrells' hardware shop in the Digey), suggests that these were conscious artistic choices.<ref name=":0" />

Wallis painted as a hobby for three years until, in August 1928, he sold some of his paintings to two young modern artists Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood, who were visiting St Ives for the day. They returned with their partners and stayed for several weeks, often visiting Wallis and buying more of his paintings.<ref name=":0" /> They were delighted by Wallis and celebrated his direct approach to image-making. Nicholson commented later that "to Wallis, his paintings were never 'paintings' but actual events".<ref>Ben Nicholson Exhibition Catalogue, Galeries Beyeler, Basle, 1968</ref> Wallis was propelled into a circle of some of the most progressive artists working in Britain in the 1930s.

The influence, however, was all one way; Wallis continued to paint as he always had. Nicholson later termed Wallis's art "something that has grown out of the Cornish seas and earth and which will endure".<ref>Ben Nicholson, Alfred Wallis, Horizon 1943</ref>

Through Nicholson and Wood, Wallis's work was introduced to Jim Ede who promoted his work in London. Despite the admiration of some of the foremost artists, critics and collectors in the British Modern Art scene throughout the 1930s – as well as international acclaim – Wallis's paintings were only ever bought for a few shillings.<ref name=":0" /> Wallis continued to live in poverty until he was taken, destitute and gravely ill, to Madron workhouse near Penzance in July 1941.

After his death on 29 August 1942, his family funeral at Barnoon Cemetery was interrupted part-way through by his admirers, who then organised a private grave and second funeral, described as “a queer little ceremony”.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> Wallis’s grave lay bare and unmarked for a year and a half until the potter Bernard Leach suggested he make a set of decorative tiles to cover it.<ref name=":0" /> Thus Leach created a beautifully unique and fitting memorial, depicting an old man at the foot of a lighthouse – a popular nautical motif in Wallis's paintings. His grave can still be seen today, overlooking Porthmeor beach and Tate St Ives.

Wallis thought his neighbours resented his fame, and that they believed him to be secretly rich.<ref name="JotC" /> In one of his last letters, to Ede, he wrote:

Examples of Wallis's paintings can be seen at Tate St Ives and Kettle's Yard in Cambridge (Jim Ede's home). In October 2020, an exhibition titled "Alfred Wallis Rediscovered" opened at Kettle's Yard.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

See also

• List of St Ives artists

External links

• Images from the Tate gallery collection.
• Template:Art UK bio