# Alfred Wallis artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/alfred-wallis/
Profile generated: 2026-05-24T19:28:05.214Z
Quality: high confidence, strong sources

## Artist identity

- Birth date: 1855-08-18
- Death date: 1942-08-29
- Nationality: British, English
- Movements: Naïve art
- Common media: Household paint on cardboard, Oil on board

## About Alfred Wallis

Alfred Wallis (1855–1942) was a self-taught British painter and former fisherman who began making art at the age of seventy, working from his home in St Ives, Cornwall. With no formal training, he used leftover household paint on scraps of cardboard to depict the harbours, ships, and coastal landscapes he had known throughout his working life at sea. His direct, untrained approach produced compositions of striking originality — flattened perspectives, layered sea and sky, and compressed spatial relationships that anticipate elements of modernist painting. Wallis came to wider attention in the late 1920s when the artists Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood encountered his work in St Ives and championed it within progressive British art circles. His output has since been recognised as among the most distinctive contributions to British naïve art, and his paintings are held by major public collections including Tate and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

## Common works and media

Wallis's surviving body of work consists primarily of small-scale paintings on cardboard or board, executed in household or oil paint. Common subjects include sailing vessels, steamships, fishing boats, harbours and ports (especially St Ives), coastal landscapes, and seascapes. Compositions often show multiple ships or layered views of land, sea, and sky compressed into a single picture plane. His works are typically modest in size, reflecting the scraps of material available to him, and most are unsigned. Drawings and works on paper also exist but are less common than his painted pieces.

## Market and appraisal context

Alfred Wallis's works appear regularly at auction, chiefly as paintings in oil or household paint on cardboard and board. Collectors and appraisers should consider several factors when evaluating a Wallis piece. Material authenticity matters: his characteristic use of scrap cardboard and commercial paint is well documented, and works on these supports are typical of his output. Subject is another key differentiator — shipping scenes, Cornish harbour views, and maritime subjects are his most recognisable and marketable images. Provenance can add substantial value, especially when a work can be traced to early collectors such as Ben Nicholson, Jim Ede, or the Kettle's Yard circle. Condition is critical because Wallis's non-archival materials make his surviving works inherently fragile and prone to deterioration over time.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine independently researched artist identity data with auction records, sale dates, realised prices, and comparable lot information when those records are available. For Alfred Wallis, identity and biographical information is drawn from the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), Getty Union List of Artist Names, VIAF, Tate, and Wikidata. Auction and market data are sourced from Invaluable and participating auction houses.

## Sources

- RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/82692
- Tate: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/alfred-wallis-577
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3354650
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/8231612/
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500029935
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wallis
- The Museum of Modern Art: https://www.moma.org/artists/6229