Alfred Wallis

Houses at St Ives, Cornwall

?c.1928–42

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In Tate Britain

Walk Through British Art: 1910

Free entry

Artist: Alfred Wallis 1855–1942
Medium: Oil paint on cardboard
Dimensions: Support: 267 x 318 mm
frame: 466 x 520 x 33 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by Ben Nicholson 1959
Reference: T00239

Online caption

Wallis had worked as seaman, ice cream vendor and scrap merchant before he took up painting as a hobby in his retirement. He lived in St Ives, Cornwall, a fishing community and artists’ colony. There he encountered the painters Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood and his work was shown with theirs in London. Most of his paintings are of his local environment or of places and events remembered from his past.

Catalogue entry

T00239 HOUSES AT ST IVES, CORNWALL

Inscr. ‘alfred wallis’ t.l.
Ship's oil paint on cardboard, 10 1/2×12 3/8 (27×31·5).
Presented by Ben Nicholson 1959.
Coll: Purchased by Ben Nicholson from the artist.
Exh: Paintings by Alfred Wallis, Bournemouth Arts Club, August–September 1950 (19, repr.).
Repr: Horizon, VII, No.37, 1943, facing p.49; Sven Berlin, Alfred Wallis, Primitive, 1949, pl.48.

[no further details]

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, II