After he retired from his work as a fisherman, Alfred Wallis spent nearly 20 years painting until his death in St Ives in 1942. Now, he is recognized as one of the most original British artists of the 20th century. This book revises previous accounts of Wallis’s life, traces the development of his painting, looks at the mythology that grew up around him and examines mid-20th-century ideas of the ‘primitive’.