Fishing Boat - Alfred Wallis

A raw, expressive depiction of a steam-powered fishing vessel by the Cornish self-taught artist Alfred Wallis.

Alfred Wallis, a retired Cornish fisherman, began painting in his late sixties. He lacked formal training, choosing instead to apply household paints directly onto scraps of cardboard or wood salvaged from his local environment. This work depicts a steam-powered fishing vessel navigating choppy waters. The composition rejects traditional perspective, favouring a flattened, intuitive arrangement that prioritises the memory of the subject over optical accuracy.

Wallis often used the shape of the cardboard to dictate the boundaries of his scene. The rough edges of the material remain visible, adding to the raw, unmediated quality of the image. His palette is limited, relying on the contrast between the dark, linear form of the boat and the swirling, pale blue strokes used to represent the sea. The masts and rigging are rendered with simple, direct lines, while the hull is defined by solid blocks of colour.

His approach to scale is non-hierarchical. The boat occupies the centre of the frame, surrounded by a rhythmic, repetitive application of paint that suggests the movement of waves. This lack of academic technique attracted the attention of Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood, who discovered Wallis in St Ives in 1928. They admired his ability to capture the essence of maritime life without the constraints of conventional art education. This print captures the immediacy of his process, preserving the texture of the original cardboard and the deliberate, unrefined brushwork that defines his body of work.