Alfred Wallis 1855-1942
Three Trees: White House in a Landscape
oil on cardboard
17 by 23 inches
signed, also inscribed verso by Ben Nicholson

Provenance
Ben Nicholson
Private Collection, UK



The inscription on the back reads
' Lent to Angela and to become her property when I pop - BN'

This is a familiar Wallis subject and treatment. A companion painting very similar to this one, is in the former Ede collection, now belonging to the University of Cambridge. Both paintings depict three dark trees with huge trunks and wispy branches. Both also feature the same rather ghostly house with its twin chimneys, and cross-barred gates opening on to a strip of road in the foreground. What differs in this particular painting is the landscape element at the top, with fields - in typically Wallis deep green - divided up into a patchwork by the Cornish stone walls. The Cambridge painting has large birds among the trees, and a dark figure, which are absent from this version. The little box-like square of a wall which encloses two small houses is another favourite motif of Wallis. He loved the geometry of places.

All in all this would be a signature Wallis even if he hadn't signed it. Since the companion painting would have been sent to Ede when he was an asssistant at the Tate Gallery in the late 30's, it is likely that Ben Nicholson acquired this painting directly from the artist at much the same time. In various letters to me written in the 60's Nicholson used to stress that Wallis always talked about his work not so much as paintings, as events or experiences. So although we don't know precisely where this scene is, we can be absolutley certain that it was a place that he knew well, and which had made a deep impression on him. If he were alive now he would have been able to explain exactly where it was, what every building was, who lived there, where the road led to, and probably how often he'd been there and why. Wallis never made anything up.

Edwin Mullins, 2004.