Wallis - Key Facts

• Alfred Wallis (18 August 1855, Devenport – 29 August 1942, St Ives) was a mariner, marine stores dealer and artist.
• His 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, sailing schooners across the North Atlantic between Penzance and Newfoundland.
• 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.
• Following his wife's death in 1922, Wallis took up painting - "for company" as he later told Jim Ede .
• 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 memry - what we may never see again..."
• 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.
• Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood came to St. Ives in 1928 and chanced upon Wallis.
• Through Nicholson and Wood, Wallis was introduced to Jim Ede who promoted his work in London.
• Wallis died in the Madron Workhouse, Penzance, in 1942.
• He is buried in Barnoon cemetery, overlooking St. Ives' Porthmeor beach.
• An elaborate gravestone, depicting a tiny mariner at the foot of a huge lighthouse, was made from tiles by the potter Bernard Leach and now covers Wallis's tomb.