Alfred Wallis valuation

Alfred Wallis (1855–1942) was born in Devonport in Devon. He fished from Newlyn with the Mount's Bay fleet, and in 1876 became a Merchant Navy mariner, sailing schooners between Penzance and Newfoundland. In 1882 he moved to St Ives, where he worked in a marine stores business buying scrap iron, sails and rope, which he took over and ran until 1912. Widowed in 1922, he took up painting in his seventies, with no training, to keep loneliness at bay. He painted from memory: the sailing ships and steamers he had known at sea, St Ives harbour and its lighthouse, houses and the Cornish landscape, ignoring perspective and sizing things by their importance. He used ship's paint, mostly greys, blacks and greens, on scraps of cardboard from packing boxes. In August 1928 Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood bought several of his paintings, and through them Jim Ede, who went on to create Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, promoted his work in London and collected more than 120 of his paintings. Tate and Kettle's Yard hold his work, and Kettle's Yard opened the exhibition Alfred Wallis Rediscovered in 2020.

His works are unique: paintings in oil and ship's paint on scraps of cardboard, some cut from boxes or printed papers, and drawings in pencil and crayon. Card of this kind is fragile, so a buyer will look for tears, worn or trimmed edges, flaking paint and any repairs. A record of who has owned the work, with any labels or letters that belong to it, should be kept together.