A self-taught artist who was born in Devonport, and who spent twenty-five years as a fisherman before he became a second-hand dealer and ice-cream seller in St.Ives between 1890 and 1912.

He began to paint when he was seventy years old, and in 1928 his work attracted the attention of Christopher Wood and Ben Nicholson, who modified their approach to colour and composition in the spirit of his painting.

His pictures of boats, harbours and seascapes are assured in their control of warm, earthy colours and cool, fresh greys and blues; he applied his paint with a lively feeling for texture to small pieces of material, often oddly shaped fragments of board and cardboard.

He composed houses and shipping on these surfaces with an uninhibited disregard of conventional perspective.