Alfred Wallis: Ships and Boats

In all his work he captures the universal aspect of his picture as opposed to its local one. Wallis is never local.

-Jim Ede on Wallis

As part of the King’s Lynn Festival, we were delighted to present an exhibition of Alfred Wallis’ paintings at the Fermoy Gallery. The gallery sits next to the River Great Ouse and is the ideal setting for Wallis’ scenes of ships and boats at sea.

Born in Devonport, Alfred Wallis was a fisherman and later a scrap-metal merchant in St. Ives. After the death of his wife in 1922, he turned to painting as a way of fending off loneliness. Wallis paints innovative seascapes drawn from his own experiences on found fragments of card and paper. He was admired by Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood, who came across his work when visiting St. Ives in 1928 and included it in the Seven & Five Society’s exhibition of 1929.