ALFRED WALLIS (1855-1942)

Provenance

H C 'Gillie' Gilbert, Wills Lane Gallery, St Ives
Mrs Sally Thomas of Bath

Description / Expertise

Godrevy Lighthouse guards the eastern most point of St. Ives Bay and guides fisherman on their return into St. Ives harbour. It appears frequently in Alfred Wallis’s paintings and drawings, in which he often recalls the comings and goings of ships within his home bay over the years. Wallis was a lonely, retired rag and bone man when he first started painting. His wife had died in June 1922 and in the tightly closed community of St. Ives he kept to himself. Deeply religious, he began to paint for ‘company’, and painting became his all absorbing passion. He considered his work to be records of ‘actual events’ from his memory and always painted indoors, writing to H.S. Ede in 1934, [I paint] what used To Be what we shall never see no more as everything is altered.(1) The steamers in this drawing may represent two of the many cargo ships bound for the harbour in the Hayle River estuary, delivering coal from South Wales. Steamers often used St. Ives Bay for shelter, and in this work one steamer appears distinctly close to the shore, perhaps representing the 3700 ton steamer Panamanian that ran aground on Porthmeor Beach on January 31, 1938 after seeking shelter in the bay.

Wallis used the various odds and ends at his disposal- yacht paint, irregular scraps of cardboard, wood, or paper- and was strongly aware of the edges of his chosen support, using them to contribute to his design. In this drawing, he arranges the shape of the bay to fit the shape of the paper, even using the jagged edge to intensify that of the rocky shore. Wallis was not concerned with perspective or how objects met the eye, but their meaning and substance. Painting the same view, he focuses upon different aspects, prioritising various features, distorting the scale, and rearranging details to suit each event from his memory. Another recollection of Godfrey Lighthouse, for example, shows it towering over the ships in the centre of the composition. As he remembers it differently, the picture varies.

Born in Plymouth, Alfred Wallis went to sea as a cabin boy, aged nine, and worked with the ships in fishing trade with New foundland. Having spent many years out at sea, he conveys through his intense personal vision the experience of being in a boat at sea, as well as looking at it. In some of his painting, crescent moons appear at a perpendicular angle as if viewed when rising up on an enormous wave, and using yacht paint, he conveys the very texture of the water in the harbour.


1. Alfred Wallis in a letter to H.S. Ede, 1934