NO. 8 CEREAL BOX

NO. 8 CEREAL BOX

Gallerist Lucy Wertheim visited Alfred Wallis in 1930 to buy some of his paintings for her new London gallery. She wrote that she found him “painting away with what appeared to be boat paint on scraps of cardboard”, and that he favoured using Pure Quaker Oats boxes.
Panels from these boxes have been identified from the reverse of several of Wallis’s paintings, including this lovely early example of a blue-hulled lugger. Wallis would have purchased these boxes along with his other regular groceries from Albert Baughan’s shop around the corner. His weekly bill was taken to him by delivery boy Jim Champion, who said it never came to more than four shillings.