Alfred Wallis was born in 1855 and died in a workhouse in Cornwall in 1942. A fisherman, sailing from Newlyn, Mousehole and St Ives, he began to paint in the 1920s - strange, brilliant pictures of ships and the sea. In 1928 he was discovered in St Ives by Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood and for the rest of his life, alone in his tiny cottage, attacked by periods of madness, he painted furiously. In MATISSE'S WAR, Peter Everett explored the psyche of one of the most celebrated painters of our age. Here he performs a similar feat for another artist, one who knew no fame in his lifetime but whose paintings have found vast popularity since his death.

Everett's insights are as bracing as the sea air. - The Times

Peter Everett was born in Hull, east Yorkshire in 1931, and began writing at the age of nineteen. He is the author of seven previous novels: A Day of Dwarfs, The Instrument, Negatives (which won the 1964 Somerset Maugham Award), A Death in Ireland, The Fetch, Visions of Heydritch and Matisse's War. He has also written for both television and radio. He lives in Sheffield.