Purchased directly from the Artist in the early 1940s by Mr. & Mrs. Lowenstein (Jane Lowenstein, nee Herman) in the early 1940s, thence by family descent to the previous owner. Mr. & Mrs. Lowenstein were close friends of Naum Gabo and his wife Miriam. It was at their invitation that the Lowenstein's visited St. Ives, in the spring of 1942, and were introduced to the town's artistic community including Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth. They visited Wallis at his cottage above Porthmeor Beach and, both impressed with his pictures and as a token of patronage, acquired several works for 2 shillings and 6 pence. The previous owner's mother remembers playing with the Nicholson triplets during this time.
Private Collection, U.K.
Following the death of his wife, Alfred Wallis took up painting ‘for company’ at the age of 70 in 1925. However, it wasn’t until 1928 that the ‘legend’ of Alfred Wallis and his place in British Modernism was seeded. Ben Nicolson recalled: “I went over for the day to St Ives with Kit Wood (Christopher Wood): this was an exciting date, for not only was it the first time I saw St Ives, but on the way back from Porthmeor Beach we passed an open door in Back Road West and through it saw some paintings of ships and houses on odd pieces of paper and cardboard nailed up all over the wall, with particularly large nails thorough the smallest ones. We knocked on the door and inside found Wallis, and the paintings we got from him then were the first he made.”
Following the encounter in 1928, Nicholson and Wood moved from Feock to St Ives and when the Nicholson’s returned to London, they took with them a cluster of Wallis’s paintings which they showed to friends and associates including the pioneering Constructivist sculptor and painter, Naum Gabo.
Gabo and his wife Miriam were close friends of Jane Lowenstein and her husband and invited the Lowensteins to St Ives in the Spring of 1942. There they met Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth and visited Wallis’s cottage at Porthmeor Beach. Impressed with the artist's work the couple acquired three examples including Sailing Boats Racing to Harbour.
Robert Jones, Wallis's biographer, wrote of Sailing Boats Racing to Harbour; "What a cracker! The two boats scoot across the painting; such energy and life. A really nice example of his work."
