Alfred Wallis: An Artists’ Artist

Having started painting at the age of 70, Wallis captured the harbours, fishing boats and coastlines of Cornwall from memory, working on discarded cardboard, packaging and household materials. His bold compositions, flattened perspective and instinctive use of colour captivated artists including Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Christopher Wood, Peter Lanyon and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, who recognised the originality of his vision. 

Bringing together Wallis’s paintings and works by artists who collected and championed him, this exhibition explores his lasting influence on modernist approaches to perspective, form, colour and composition, while celebrating a body of work that remains entirely unique. Curated by James Scott, it reveals why Alfred Wallis continues to be regarded as one of Britain’s most original artists. 

James Scott is an orthopaedic surgeon whose work on the value of the arts in healthcare settings is internationally recognised. He was the Founding Chairman of the Arts Project at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London when it opened in 1993, which has been responsible for placing more than 1,500 works of art in the hospital. Scott described this work in The Healing Arts (Unicorn Publishing, 2019). He has written The Sculpture of Kenneth Armitage (Lund Humphries, 2016) and The Women who Shaped Modern Art in Britain (Unicorn Publishing, 2021).