A late-starting Cornish painter, and the artists who learned from him

A new exhibition looks at how Alfred Wallis, a Cornish painter who began painting at 70, influenced some of Britain's best-known modern artists.

The show, called Alfred Wallis: an Artists' Artist, opens on 21 November at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, West Sussex, and runs until 2 May 2027. The Art Newspaper reports that it then moves to Penlee House in Penzance, Cornwall, from 15 May to 9 October 2027. James Scott is the curator.

Wallis (1855-1942) never trained as an artist. He worked as a fisherman and as a rag-and-bone merchant, a trader in old goods and scrap, before he first took up painting in his seventies. He became known for simple, direct pictures of boats, sea and land made from a self-taught eye.

His work caught the attention of painters in St Ives, the Cornish seaside town that had become a hub for modern artists. Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood first befriended him in 1928. Their friendship, and the admiration that followed, helped draw other artists into his orbit.

The exhibition sets Wallis's paintings beside works by Barbara Hepworth, Peter Lanyon, Margaret Mellis, Adrian Stokes, John Wells, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Ben and Winifred Nicholson, and Christopher Wood. Put together, the show follows how these artists responded to him, according to the description published by The Art Newspaper.

The title is a phrase used for a painter whose work other painters study and admire. Here it points to a story that often gets less attention than the artists who came later: a man with no formal training whose pictures held the interest of some of the most influential names in British modern art.

For visitors, the exhibition gives two chances to see the work in the South West of England. Chichester is in the south of England, while Penzance sits at the far western tip of Cornwall, close to St Ives.