(b Devonport, Aug 8, 1855; d Madron, Cornwall, ?Aug 29, 1942). English painter, fisherman and scrap merchant. Although the exact date of Wallis’s birth is doubtful, he stated in letters to Jim Ede, one of his greatest patrons, that he was born on the day of the fall of Sebastopol. He claimed to have gone to sea at the age of nine and was involved in deep-sea fishing, sometimes sailing as far as Newfoundland. About 1875 he married Susan Ward, a woman 21 years his senior, and shortly afterwards gave up deep-sea fishing to become an inshore fisherman. In 1890 he moved to St Ives, Cornwall, where he set up as a marine scrap merchant. In 1912 he retired. His wife died in 1922, whereupon he took up painting to keep himself company, as he told Ede. In 1928 Christopher Wood and Ben Nicholson discovered Wallis in St Ives. Both artists were already working in a primitive idiom but were further encouraged by the discovery of Wallis. His principal subjects were ships at sea and shipwrecks, especially the ships that had disappeared during his lifetime (e.g. ...