Fishes and Lobster Pots - Alfred Wallis

A characteristic work by Alfred Wallis, featuring his signature flattened perspective and raw, intuitive depiction of Cornish maritime life.

Alfred Wallis, a retired Cornish fisherman, began painting in his late sixties. His work is defined by an absence of formal training and a reliance on memory, intuition, and the materials available to him. He frequently painted on scraps of cardboard, often using household paint or whatever pigments were at hand. This piece, Fishes and Lobster Pots, reflects his deep familiarity with the maritime environment of St Ives.

The composition is flattened, prioritising the arrangement of forms over realistic perspective. Two large, pale fish dominate the foreground, their bodies rendered with simple, direct outlines. Smaller fish and a series of lobster pots are scattered across the dark, textured ground, creating a sense of rhythmic repetition. The upper portion of the work features a dark, indistinct band that suggests a distant shoreline or the horizon line of the sea, rendered in muted, earthy tones.

Wallis did not seek to replicate the appearance of the ocean. Instead, he mapped his experience of the sea through a personal visual shorthand. The surface of the cardboard remains visible, contributing to the raw, tactile quality of the image. His approach to space is non-hierarchical, where objects are placed according to their importance to the narrative rather than their physical distance from the viewer. This work captures the essence of his practice, which was driven by a need to record the life he knew best. The simplicity of his mark-making and the restricted colour palette allow the viewer to focus on the essential shapes of the marine life and equipment that defined his working life in Cornwall.