Alfred Wallis finally arrived home from his ordeal at sea on 10 November 1876. Tragically, he missed seeing his newly born son, Alfred Charles Wallis, who had died just six weeks earlier. Wallis and his wife later had a second child, Ellen Jane, but heartbreak struck again when she died shortly after her first birthday.

Wallis's step-granddaughter said that in later life, thoughts of losing his children made him “nearly cry”.

Both children were buried in Penzance Cemetery, in graves almost vertically adjacent - a detail I believe Wallis captured in this painting at Kettle's Yard.

Just as he once said that the fish he painted were the souls of ships, it’s not far-fetched to suggest that he represented the souls of his children here as two lambs.

When Wallis made this painting in the 1930s, he was known for his regular walks to Penzance. I suggest that he was visiting his children’s graves - a personal ritual perhaps reflected in the solitary figure at the bottom of the scene.