Outside In

Alfred Wallis was born in Plymouth, Devon in 1855.  His father was from Devon and his mother, who was Cornish, died a few years after Wallis was born. The family eventually moved to Penzance in Cornwall. According to Wallis, poverty in his childhood meant he had to find employment at the age of nine, as a cabin-boy on a deep-sea fishing boat, and he claimed that he continued to work on these schooners as a seaman, sailing in the North Atlantic to catch fish, on voyages that could last for weeks. 

Wallis married Susan Ward in around 1875. Her eldest son, George, was his best friend.  She was 21 years his senior and the mother of five children. The death of both his two children with Susan seemed to convince Wallis that he should change to inshore fishing as a means of earning an income, in order to work closer to home. The family moved to St Ives in 1890 and Wallis gave up fishing altogether, to work as a marine scrap merchant until his retirement.

In 1922, after the death of his wife, Wallis took up painting to occupy himself. A few years later his paintings were noticed by Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood who had recently moved to St Ives. They found his approach to art inspiring and introduced him to their circle of artists who appreciated and were influenced by his paintings.

Alfred Wallis painted from memory with a clarity and simplicity of design.  He found perspective meaningless, but the detail on a ship’s rigging essential. Proportion was often based on the importance of that object to the scene. He used simple irregular scraps of cardboard and wood as supports for his pictures and painted with yacht paint. The paintings were based on events or experiences and occasionally he would write a note on the painting to describe the picture. 

www.alfredwallis.org.uk