Grey Sailing Ship and Small Boat - Alfred Wallis

A raw, expressive marine study by the Cornish folk artist Alfred Wallis, featuring a sailing ship and a smaller vessel on a textured, grey sea.

Alfred Wallis, a former Cornish fisherman and scrap merchant, began painting in his late sixties. He lacked formal training, yet his work possesses a directness that attracted the attention of Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood in 1928. This piece, Grey Sailing Ship and Small Boat, displays the characteristic features of his practice: the use of salvaged cardboard as a support, the rejection of traditional perspective, and a focus on the maritime subjects he knew from his working life.

Wallis often painted on irregular scraps of cardboard, allowing the shape of the material to dictate the composition. In this work, the vessels occupy a space defined by memory rather than optical reality. The larger sailing ship is rendered with a dark, heavy hull and distinct sails, while the smaller boat sits lower in the frame. The sea is represented by broad, gestural strokes of grey and white paint, creating a sense of movement without the need for realistic shading or depth.

His approach to scale is intuitive: the ships are sized according to their importance to the narrative rather than their distance from the viewer. This lack of academic artifice results in a raw, honest depiction of the Cornish coast. Wallis did not aim for technical perfection. Instead, he captured the essence of the vessels and the turbulent waters of the Atlantic. His work remains a significant example of British folk art, valued for its unmediated vision and its influence on the development of modernism in St Ives. By using household paints and discarded materials, Wallis created a body of work that remains distinct from the professional art world of his time.