Frederick Horsman Varley
Nationality: Canadian
Born: 1881-01-02, Sheffield, England
Died: 1969-09-08
When Fred Varley arrived in Vancouver in September of 1926, he was one of Canada's leading portraitists and a landscape artist of conviction and power. Born in England in 1881, Varley trained in his native Sheffield and at the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Antwerp. He emigrated to Canada in 1912, becoming a distinguished war artist during World War I and a founding member of the Group of Seven. Although he came to Vancouver to take up a job at the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts (now the Emily Carr College of Art and Design), it was the landscape of British Columbia that was to have a profound effect on his life and art.
Varley, in common with most Post-Impressionist artists, believed in addressing the landscape directly, and he found a rich source of inspiration at his doorstep. A keen hiker, he sketched in the coastal mountains near Vancouver, developing the lush vegetation, rugged terrain and effects of cloud and sun as subjects. In oil sketches such as Mountain Vista, Dawn, and Blue Ridge, Upper Lynn, all executed in the period 1929-1932, Varley moved beyond immediate representations of the landscape to images which suggest his own spiritual journey. In its audacious lack of definition in the middle ground and remarkable sensitivity to colour with an extremely close harmonic range, Dawn recalls the landscape images of "the Chinese of the 11th and 12th century," the only artists whom Varley felt had "ever interpreted the spirit of such a country." Where a sketch such as Blue Ridge, Upper Lyn, with its rude, fire-scarred stumps, recalls example of Lawren Harris, it is equally evocative of the strong patterns of Chinese calligraphy. Yet it is Varley's own composition in its romantic vitality and sense of rebirth. The engagement with the West Coast landscape radically changed Varley's approach to composition and enriched his palette. This willingness to change, to adjust his assumptions and expand his work from a variety of sources, made Varley an excellent teacher. He strongly influenced a number of local artists—notably Charles Scott, W.P. Weston and Jock Macdonald—as well as many students.
Varley also matured and grew as a portraitist while working in Vancouver. From 1930 to 1936, his principal model was the young artist Vera Weatherbie, and his close relationship with her inspired a series of portrait images unrivaled in Canadian art. Although the Vancouver Art Gallery does not possess a portrait of Vera, its Portrait of Herold Mortimer Lamb, (c.1930) is a fine example of Varley's skills in the genre. The image is deceptively casual, almost like a snapshot, with the figure slightly a central. Although the background and torso are richly painted, our attention is concentrated on the head through the use of colour, light and shade, and the more precise application of paint. (Colour is particularly significant in that Varley believed that each of us has a coloured "aura" which reflects our psychological state.)
Sadly, Varley's artistic success was not matched by financial success while he was in Vancouver. The Depression had meant a reduction in his salary at the art school and he and his colleague, Jock Macdonald, left in protest. In 1933, they started a new school, the B.C. College of the Arts, with the assistance of Harry Tauber, Beatrice Lennie and others, but this ended in financial disaster after only two years. In 1937, Varley left Vancouver, closing an important chapter in his life. Although British Columbia and its landscape remained an important reference for him, Varley was never to live in the province again nor was he again to enjoy such a sustained period of creativity. The remainder of his career was spent in Ontario, with visits to the Arctic in 1938 and British Columbia in the 1950s. He died near Toronto in 1969.
Source. Thom, Ian M. "Frederick Varley," Vancouver Art Gallery Collection. Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 1994.
