Sold at Auction: Frederick Horsman Varley

(b Sheffield, England, 1881; d Toronto, Canada 1969) Canadian Painter. Frederick Varley was a member of a prestigious group of Canadian landscape painters called the “Group of Seven” who toured around Canada in the 1920’s. Varley spent the first 31 years of his life in England. He studied painting at the Sheffield School of Art and in Belgium at the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts. He married and began a family in Sheffield where he grew up; but in 1912 his friend Arthur Lismer convinced him to move to Canada. In Ontario, Varley got a job at the design firm Grip Ltd. where he met the other members of what would become the Group of Seven. Their work was mostly inspired by the Canadian landscape, though Varley also worked in portraiture. Varley participated in the First World War as an official “overseas artist,” painting scenes of the battlefield; he was profoundly affected and disturbed by the experience. After the war Varley and the group of seven reunited but in 1931 went their separate ways. Varley continued to paint and teach.