Dimensions: support: 302 x 591 mm
Copyright: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Editor: So, this is Alfred Wallis's "Two-Masted Ship." There isn't a date for it, but the artist lived from 1855 to 1942. It's part of the Tate collection. The colors are muted, almost dreamlike. What do you make of it? Curator: Wallis was a mariner, a fisherman, before he was an artist, and I suspect his paintings are like memories surfacing, slightly out of focus. The proportions aren’t quite right, are they? It's as if he's painting the essence of a ship, not a literal depiction. Editor: That's interesting, like a child's drawing but with a lifetime of experience behind it. The wonkiness adds to its charm. Curator: Exactly! And the roughness of the materials he used – often painting on cardboard – adds to that sense of immediacy, doesn't it? He's not trying to impress, just trying to capture something essential. Editor: I see that now. Thanks!
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Wallis, a retired seaman, took up painting in the mid-1920s to relieve the loneliness he felt after the death of his wife. His subjects were based on memories of life at sea and the town and harbour of St. Ives, Cornwall. He painted child-like images on a variety of discarded materials using household or ship's paint. This gave his work a roughness and directness that artists such as Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood found appealing. 'Two-Masted Ship', for example, is painted on the reverse of a G.W.R. cheap fare schedule for 1928. The ship is a brigantine, many of which were used as trading vessels in the latter half of the nineteenth century until 1920. The lighthouse is probably the Eddystone, off Plymouth. Gallery label, September 2004
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