Alfred Wallis
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Alfred Wallis (18 August 1855 – 29 August 1942) was a Cornish fisherman and artist. Wallis's parents, Charles and Jane Wallis were from Penzance in Cornwall and moved to Devonport, Devon to find work in 1850 where Alfred and his brother Charles were born. Shortly after this the children's mother died and this prompted the family to move back to Penzance. On leaving school Alfred became an apprentice basket maker before becoming a mariner in the merchant service by the early 1870s. This work involved sailing schooners across the North Atlantic between Penzance and Newfoundland.[1]
Alfred married Susan Ward at St. Mary's church in Penzance in 1876, when he was 20 and his wife was 41 and became stepfather to her five children. He continued his life as a deep-sea fisherman on the Newfoundland run in the early days of his marriage allowing him to earn a good wage until the death of his two infant children when Alfred switched to local fishing and labouring in Penzance.
The family moved to St. Ives, Cornwall, in 1890 where he established himself as a marine stores dealer, buying scrap iron, sails, rope and other items. In 1912, his business, "Wallis, Alfred, Marine Stores Dealer" closed for business and Alfred kept himself busy with odd jobs and worked for a local antiques dealer Mr Armour which provided some insight into the world of objets d'art.
Following his wife's death in 1922, Wallis took up painting, to, as he later told Jim Ede, "for company".[2]
His paintings are an excellent example of naïve art; perspective is ignored and an object's scale is often based on its relative importance in the scene. This gives many of his paintings a map-like quality. Wallis painted his seascapes from memory, in large part because the world of sail he knew was being replaced by steamships. As he himself put it, his subjects were "what use To Bee out of my memery what we may never see again..."[3] Having little money, Wallis improvised with materials, mostly painting on cardboard ripped from packing boxes using a limited palette of paint brought from ships chandlers.
In many ways, Wallis' timing was excellent. In 1928, a few years after he had started painting, Ben Nicholson and Kit Wood came to St. Ives and established an artist colony. They were delighted to find Wallis and celebrated his direct approach to image-making. Wallis was propelled into a circle of the some of most progressive artists working in Britain in the 1930s. The influence, however, was all one way; Wallis continued to paint as he always had.
Through Nicholson and Wood, Wallis was introduced to Jim Ede who promoted his work in London. Despite this attention, Wallis sold few of his paintings and continued to live in poverty until he died in the Madron Workhouse in Penzance. He is buried in Barnoon cemetery, overlooking St. Ives' Porthmeor beach and the Tate St Ives gallery. An elaborate gravestone, depicting a tiny mariner at the foot of a huge lighthouse – a popular motif in Wallis' paintings – was made from tiles by the potter Bernard Leach and now covers Wallis' tomb.
Examples of Wallis' paintings can be seen at Kettle's Yard (Jim Ede's home) and at the Tate St Ives.
[edit] External links
- Images from the Tate gallery collection.
- The Life & Work of Alfred Wallis - St Ives Artist & Mariner
- Alfred Wallis Cottage - The Home of the Artist
- Alfred Wallis' Marine Stores - Shop/Home of the Artist
- artcornwall.org on-line journal for art and artists in Cornwall
