ALFRED WALLIS (1855-1942)
Two ships and steamer past a port- Falmouth and
St. Anthony lighthouse, c. 1931
Oil on card
Signed lower right Alfred Wallis
26.3 x 40.9 cm (10 ⅜ x 16 ⅛ in)
Provenance
The Artist
Jim Ede
Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge
Ede believed passionately in Wallis's paintings. During
the Second World War, he told Ben Nicholson:
Don't run away with the idea that I want to sell my
Wallis's – it was just that I have a good many & felt
that I ought to be content with a couple of dozen –
but when put to the point of parting with any one –
once I see them again I do have doubts that I could.
It's the only thing I do still cling to, pictures, & for
Wallis I'm a miser
1
Over one hundred of Wallis's paintings and drawings
remain at Kettle's Yard. Many of these Ede hung, often
two deep, in the library extension. Made using materials
that Wallis had to hand, they depict scenes from memory
with an immediacy and directness that appealed equally
to Ede's artist friends. As Ede described:
Wallis knew what it was to be at sea – entirely
and totally – his paintings carry with them a ship-
feeling, and a land-in-the-distance feeling and a
pitching and a tossing and a passing of lighthouses
and other ships and a blinding of spray, and a
vastness of sky which somehow seems above and
below.
2
Upper extension, Kettle's Yard, to the right many of the works by Alfred
Wallis are visible.
Photograph Paul Allitt, 2011. © Courtesy Kettle's Yard.
© Kettle's Yard / Bridgeman
1 Ede, letter to Ben Nicholson [undated], 'Tube Train', Tate Archive,
TGA 8717/1/2/886.
2 Ede, A Way of Life, p.214.
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