Glossary: Naive Painting and Alfred Wallis

Naive art in Britain is probably exemplified by the work of Alfred Wallis, an old Cornish fisherman from St Ives who painted harbour scenes and seascapes on to the back of cigar boxes and the like. These lovely, simple scenes where noticed by Christopher Wood and Ben Nicholson in the 1920s when they arrived to set up an artist's colony. Wallis' work has a map-like quality that details in one dimension the scene he wished to depict. He was embraced by the celebrated artistic community who copied his style to produce faux naive paintings. The artistic input was only one way and Wallis continued to paint in the only way he knew how. During his life he rarely sold any paintings and died in poverty in a local workhouse.

See entry under "faux naive" for the spectacle of us eating humble pie on the spelling of the word "naive".