James Fox TV - Tim Marlow & Peter Blake TV - BBC online - Ben Nicholson -
The cardboard paintings of Cornish boats by Alfred Wallis, graceful and tasteful abstractions from Ben Nicholson, and the quirky paintings of harbours by Christopher Wood. Dr James Fox, The Art of Cornwall, BBC 2010
Schooner Approaching Harbour c.1930: It’s the Holy Grail really, isn’t it ... Folk Art: this is the artist they’ll know about. He lived in St Ives in Cornwall ... Tim Marlow Meets Sir Peter Blake
There’s this sense of being rooted in a place, and drawing from that place. ibid.
b Devonport, 8 Aug 1855; d Madron, nr Penzance, Cornwall, 29 Aug 1942). British naive painter of sailing ships and landscapes. He went to sea as a cabin boy and cook at the age of 9, and from about 1880 worked as a fisherman in Cornwall. In 1890 he opened a rag-and-bone store in St Ives and after retiring from this did odd jobs, including selling ice cream. BBC online
On one of the last occasions on which I saw him, about a month before he died, as soon as he caught sight of me he got up and came straight towards me saying: ‘I’ve been wanting to see you. I want black and white and green. Enamel. In tins. 6d. each.’ As he had recently been using blue I said: ‘What about blue?’ ‘No,’ he replied, ‘I want Black and White and Green.’ Ben Nicholson