Alfred Wallis (1855-1942) was a British naive painter of sailing ships and landscapes. He began painting in 1925 to ease the loneliness he felt after his wife’s death and was discovered by Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood in 1928, the unselfconscious vigor of his work making a powerful impression on them. Wallis painted from memory and imagination, usually working with ship’s paint on scraps of cardboard or wood. Although he rapidly became the best-known of British naive artists, he died in a workhouse.

Some of Alfred Wallis’s best-known works include:

St Ives harbour: White sailing ship
The Bayeux Tapestry
Three ships and lighthouse
White sailing ship – three masts
Against Longships fog
Headland with two three-masters
Seascape
Mount’s Bay with St Michael’s Mount, Cornwall