§ ◆ ALFRED WALLIS (BRITISH 1855-1942) HOUSES IN ST.

§ ◆ ALFRED WALLIS (BRITISH 1855-1942) HOUSES IN ST. IVES oil, pencil and chalk on cardboard (18.5cm x 26.5cm (7.25in x 10.5in)) Provenance: In Barns-Graham's notes about her collection she states she was given three oils by Alfred Wallis by Mary Buchanan, Ben Nicholson and Sven Berlin. In the exhibition catalogue for Alfred Wallis (The Arts Council of Great Britain 1968) it states this painting is ex-collection Ben Nicholson. Exhibited: 1950: Possibly shown with title 'Houses', Bournemouth, Bournemouth Arts Club, Alfred Wallis and Christopher Wood, 12 Aug to 2 Sep 1950, no. 32; 1959: St Ives, 36 Fore Street (Penwith Gallery?), Alfred Wallis Exhibition, 1-6 June 1959, cat. no. 24; 1968: London, The Arts Council of Great Britain, Alfred Wallis, Tate Gallery 30 May to 30 June 1968, York City Art Gallery 6 to 28 July; 1968: Aberdeen Art Gallery 3 to 25 August, Abbot Hall Art Gallery 31 Aug to 22 Sep 1968, cat. no. 2, plate XII; 1983: St Ives, Penwith Gallery, Alfred Wallis, 3 September to 1 October 1983, cat. no. 5; 1985: London, Tate, St Ives 1939-64: Twenty Five Years of Painting, Sculpture and Pottery, Tate 13 Feb to 14 Apr 1985, cat. no. 25; 1999-2000: Dublin, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Two Painters: Works by Alfred Wallis and James Dixon, Irish Museum of Modern Art, 1 Sep to 21 Nov 1999, Tate St Ives, May to Nov 2000, cat. no. 3. 2020: Bristol, Royal West of England Academy, St Ives: Movements in Art and Life, 14 March to 19 September 2020. Footnote: Literature: Possibly published with title 'Houses,' Nicholson, Ben (1950), (Bournemouth Arts Club Presents a Retrospective Exhibition of) Paintings by Alfred Wallis, Sydenham & Co. Ltd, Bournemouth, cat.no. 32; The Arts Council of Great Britain (1968), Alfred Wallis, Percy Lund, Humpries & Co Ltd, London and Bradford, cat. no. 2, plate XII; Tate Gallery (1985), St Ives 1939-64: Twenty Five Years of Painting, Sculpture and Pottery, Tate Gallery Productions, London, cat. no. 25; Irish Museum of Modern Art (2000), Two Painters: Works by Alfred Wallis and James Dixon, Merrell Holberton Publishers Ltd, London, cat. no. 3. The three paintings in this collection by Alfred Wallis were gifted to Barns-Graham by individual friends: Mary Buchanan, Sven Berlin, and Ben Nicholson. Wallis died in 1942 two years after Willie settled in St Ives. There was time however for her to become acquainted with him, and to act as a sort of ambassador for those who wished to meet the self-taught painter (he could be crotchety). She admired, as did Ben Nicholson and other painters before her, the simplicity and directness of his imagemaking. There was a freedom, a lack of formality, that the Moderns strived for. To Wallis, painting was a physical event: perspective and relative scale was irrelevant as he storyboarded his memories. It is difficult today, when his work commands so much attention, to imagine the ease with which one could acquire his work, and also give it away. Mary Buchanan and her husband, the novelist George Buchanan were among those friends the newly arrived Barns-Graham made through the auspices of her Edinburgh College of Art fellow painter Margaret Mellis, and her new husband the art critic and painter, Adrian Stokes. The latter was the catalyst for the move to Cornwall of Barbara Hepworth, her husband Ben Nicholson and the Russian sculptor Naum Gabo with his wife, Miriam. The Stokes’ Carbis Bay home, Little Parc Owles, was a magnet for all new arrivals, and those visiting from London and elsewhere. Despite the house being full of senior Modernist figures, Barns-Graham never forgot her first encounter with the group of Wallis paintings Stokes owned. Always a note-taker, she recorded the oddly shaped bits of cardboard he painted on, and his particular colours: black boats, green and white seas, and grey houses. Some very early St Ives paintings of sheds by Willie owe something to Wallis, the flattening of perspective and his palette. Essay by Lynne Green, author of W. Barns-Graham: a studio life, and Trustee of the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust.