Artists
Alfred Wallis
Alfred Wallis, primitive artist was born in Devonport, Devon. On leaving school he became an apprentice basket maker before becoming a mariner in the merchant service, sailing schooners across the North Atlantic between Penzance and Newfoundland.
In 1876, aged twenty, he married Susan Ward a widow twenty-one years older than himself, and became stepfather to her five children. Subsequently he switched to fishing and labouring in Penzance and in 1890 moved with his family to St. Ives, Cornwall where he established a marine rag and bone store. In 1912, he closed the business and occupied himself with odd jobs and work for a local antiques dealer.
He took up painting in 1922 following the death of his wife, as he later explained, to "keep himself company". Painting in a naïve style, perspective in Wallis’ work is ignored and an object's scale is often based on its relative importance in the scene. The sea and the town of St. Ives were his preferred subjects. Having little money, he improvised with materials, mostly painting on cardboard ripped from packing boxes using a limited palette of paint brought from ships chandlers. 'I am self taught' he wrote to H.S. Ede 'so you cannot like me to those that have been taught both in school and paint’.
In 1928, Ben Nicholson and Kit Wood came to St. Ives and established an artist colony, thus introducing Wallis into a circle of the some of most progressive artists working in Britain in the 1930s. Speaking of Wallis in 1943, Nicholson said "using the materials nearest to hand is the motive and method of the first creative artist. Certainly his vision is a remarkable thing with an intensity and depth of experience which makes it much more than merely child-like ' Through Nicholson and Wood, he was introduced to Jim Ede who promoted his work in London but few of his paintings were sold. He continued to live in poverty until his death, aged 87, in August 1942 in the Madron Workhouse, Penzance.
He is buried in Barnoon cemetery, overlooking St. Ives' Porthmeor beach and the Tate St. Ives Gallery, where many of his paintings are exhibited.
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