Originally published in Vancouver Observer as a 3-part series , Aug 14-16, 2014. Republished here intact for archival purposes [wayback machine archive], tided up and re-posted, 2024
Note: pardon lack of painting/photo credits – lost to time, best efforts, used with “fair use, non-commercial” intent
What follows is Part 3 of a three-part series exploring the decade which Group of Seven painter Frederick Varley lived in Vancouver and played a pivotal role in the creation of a west coast art movement and sensibility.
Preface: Trained in Belgium, and unlike the rest of the G7, primarily a portraitist, Varley explored his rugged new location – from a Jericho cabin to summer-long camps in Garbaldi – and often with a group of students and artists along, before moving to a cheap place in Lynn Canyon with his mistress. While there, broke and often drunk, he painted true masterpieces on insulation paper. Commemorated with only a trail along Lynn Creek, come along to learn about one of Vancouver’s (almost) unknown shapers.
[image goes here: Varley-900 “Cheakamus canyon by Frederick Varley“]
Art creates our future. When master craftsman skills, meet emotional intent, and is amplified by originality and integrity, a piece of the human experience – a chapter in the collective history – is minted.
As these artifacts are assembled and cherished by subsequent generations they inspire and demonstrate the struggles of existence, evolutions of culture, sagas and stories, and idealized figures, through paintings and other medium.
But art is not static – or shouldn’t be anyhow. In the best works, the influences and interpretations are able to inspire beyond generations. And of course, there is no end of stories about artists who are undiscovered or underappreciated in their own time.
Frederick Varley fell somewhere in between.
Early notoriety came with the Group of 7 and adventures with Tom Thomson and the idea of hearty artists clambering mountains, canoeing rapids, and laying thick swaths of paint in free forms in the then emerging country. These painters created a new kind of Canadian hero, artistic Coureur des bois, adventurers seeking views, rather than pelts.
Unlike his peers, Varley was a portraitist and a reluctant landscape painter. However his landscapes were often so stirring, when complete the images somehow “felt” like nature more than “resembled” nature. So it goes, the painting which defines Varley to many art historians and enthusiasts is “Stormy Weather, Georgian Bay” which hangs in the Canada’s National Gallery.
[image goes here: stormy “Stormy Weather, Georgian Bay” by Frederick Varley
The public (read: art dealers) always wanted more grand natural scenes like others of his Group produced – to great acclaim and often financial success. But Varley felt there was no challenge in landscapes, and since several other of his G7 colleagues had painted this same bay over the years, so he saw no point in creating an industry of this one location.
By any measure, during his time in BC, he produced his most transformative works. The mix of his eye and energy, coupled with the stunning, rugged vistas and interesting human faces, was a perfect match for Varley to create without restraint or direction from anyone.
By fusing Chinese scroll paintings and unique perspectives, colour symbolism, and pushing the subject to the outside of the canvas, he created a purely original aesthetic which was unlike any paintings hitherto created on the rugged West coast.
Though not a landscape painter per se, towards the end of his time in Vancouver area, flat broke living in Lynn Canyon he returned to landscapes because there were no other models besides the two of them, both of which he’d painted many times.

The results of these final months are often watercolour gouache on insulation backing paper, or odds and ends of colour tubes, and board. Yet even with scraps of supplies, his subtle technique captured both the tranquility and promise of unexplored nature, and the quiet potential power of the same nature around him.

Finding Varley
While your humble writer attended school diligently in then barely sprawling suburbs of Vancouver, stomped around Lynn Canyon (and the free suspension bridge!) with my brothers, as a scout hiked along the Baden Powell trail, at no point did I hear of Frederick Varley – until I moved to a new neighbourhood, and found a perfect trail which led me to learn who Varley was, and what he left behind.
From a practical standpoint, he left debt to his partner in BC Arts College, his wife Maude and children (who later bought and lived in the Lynn Canyon house for many years until she died in 1975), his mistress/muse Vera Weatherbie, who after relationships with both Varley and Vanderpant, married Harold Mortimer-Lamb, a painter (whom Varley painted).
Later in her life, Vera received more appreciation of her art but, by that time, she had left her artist life mostly behind and preferred to promote interest for her husband’s works.
We know Varley left Vancouver towards Ottawa. We know he easily found art-minded ladies to be his patrons, he emerged for sketching and painting journeys to the Arctic, the USSR, and returned as far west as the Rocky Mountains. And he emerged for this film in 1953. Still somewhat spry, still somehow sad. But, tracing his steps amidst the neighbourhoods in Vancouver, where he captured his artistic lightning, i can’t help to feel like something of importance is missing from these seminal days of local art. A slice of the story, yet unpreserved or underused.
Varley Remixes, Explorations and Resources
There is a variety of ways to connect your contemporary experience with Varley’s era. Whether you paint, record, dance, hike, write or otherwise, find a way to create and share your work.
Below are more examples, resources, ideas, ephemera and creative prompts to inspire and celebrate the birth of a Vancouver art culture, and the renegades who shaped it, and us.
Varley Residence & Studio Map:

[note: find bigger version]
Film: In 1953, Varley played himself in a 16-minute film directed by Allan Wargon and produced by the National Film Board.
In the film which really has no dialogue, we see Varley returning from a hike in the hills. He hitchhikes back into town and into a small apartment and studio with canvases in various states of completion. Fred mutters and fumbles around before going out for bread and cheese. Soon after a nibble, he finds his spark, his flow, his inspiration and begins a new creation.
In the background, you’ll notice the his late masterpiece, the translucent and radiant “Liberation”. A skeletal man in a state of bliss or transcendence – or perhaps he is suffering?
Varley by Allan Wargon, National Film Board of Canada (also available for download or on DVD)
CBC Interview: “A Visit to Frederick Varley” [note: film seems to be missing] was again created by Allan Wargon. While not available for embedding or downloading, this interview which aired on CBC on April 20, 1965 (4 years before his death), is likely the last video footage of Varley. In this clip he candidly discusses his technique for painting portraits – including his opinion about beautiful people – the CBC feature also adds this biographic run-down:
“Frederick Varley is unique among the members of the Group of Seven. He’s celebrated for his skill as a painter of portraits rather than the moody landscapes that typify the Group’s output. In this excerpt from the CBC TV series Other Voices, Varley discusses his approach to painting friends and commissioned portraits. Artist John Nichols pays him a visit and learns that Varley refuses to paint someone if they’re too beautiful.
• Born in 1881 in Sheffield, England, Frederick Horsman Varley immigrated to Canada in 1912. He first worked at Grip Limited and quickly switched to Rous & Mann, but met other Group members at the Arts & Letters Club.
• Varley worked for the War Records office in the First World War, painting such works as For What?, which depicted soldiers’ bodies heaped on a cart. He also travelled to France in 1919 to sketch the war’s aftermath.• Broken apart by the war, the painters in the Group weren’t reunited in Toronto until late 1919. After some small exhibitions of Algoma sketches, including the first showing outside Toronto, in Belleville, they organized their first show under the name “Group of Seven.”
• In a 1964 interview, Arthur Lismer recalled a meeting in which the group tried to find a name. “Well, count them,” he said. “One-two-three-four-five-six-seven. There’s the name of your group, the Group of Seven.”• In 1924, Varley travelled to Winnipeg and Edmonton to work on portraits that had been commissioned by prominent local citizens. He hoped to drum up more such commissions and took a side trip to Calgary to see the Rockies.
• Two years later, he moved west to work at the Vancouver School of Art as head of the department of painting and drawing.• In the latter years of his life until his death in 1969, Varley lived with Kathleen and Donald MacKay in Unionville, Ontario. The MacKay house was later donated to the town and became an art centre. It is located across the street from the Frederick Horsman Varley Art Gallery.
• When this clip was broadcast, a new housing development called Varley Village was under construction in Unionville.• Varley was married in England in 1908 and brought his wife and two children with him when he moved to Canada.
• Varley died in 1969 at age 88. He is buried in the cemetery at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.’
[image goes here: cbc-varley]
Book: Frederick Varley: Portraits into the Light (available as Google eBook)
A voluminous tome with great care given his artistic legacy and includes many rare sketches of Inuit from his trip to the Arctic.
Ephemera: Illustrated Vancouver’s Fred Varley tag — @JMV’s carefully curated collection of murals, folkart, beer labels and lost fine art and pointed out Varley’s sketch of, what looks like, a lady on a laptop.
[image goes here: woman-laptop-850×1028]
Every Place Has a Story: Eve Lazurus also turns in a charming personal account of hiking around Varley’s Lynn Canyon home (and also stopping in at End of the Line cafe) in her Frederick Horsman Varley’s Lynn Valley (1881-1969) dispatch
snippet:

To his delight the house came with a piano and was available for $8 a month. He could commute to Vancouver by street car and ferry.
“That was the happiest time,” Varley told a reporter 20 years later. “The only place in the world that I truly felt was mine.”
Megaphone Magazine: Published a 1500 word version of my discourse as Varley’s Vancouver, Discovering the City’s Artistic Hearts in Frederick Varley’s Past see instead archived version: “Varley in Megaphone” & Freed Weed ~ “Exploring Vancouver’s counter-culture landmarks” in Megaphone mag

Gallery: There is a Varley Art Gallery in as part of the Varley-McKay Art Foundation of Markham, Ontario and a street in Unionville, Ontario bears his name. McKay refers to a patron who supporting Varley later in life.
VAG: Vancouver Art Gallery has collected 19 Varley paintings or sketches as well as a fond of personal papers including some illuminating letters from his son who became an art dealer and was agent for selling the elder Varley’s work.

Varley paintings at Vancouver Art Gallery
Portrait of H. Mortimer-Lamb, c.1930
Untitled Figure Study, 1939
Dawn, 1929
Steeple Mountain, Kootenay Lake, 1956
Sketch of Garrow Bay, c.1935
Mountain Vista, B.C., 1929
Untitled, 1929
Untitled, 1929
Untitled, 1929
Swimming Pool at Lumberman’s Arch, 1932
Untitled (Vera and Mr. Weatherbie), 1929
Young Artist at Work, 1924
Ice Floes, Low Tide, Cape Dorset, 1938
Blue Ridge, Upper Lynn, 1931
Bridge Over Lynn, 1932
Girl’s Head, c. 1931
Evening-Georgian Bay, c.1920
Mount Garibaldi, 1927-1928
Artists influenced by Varley
Along with the aforementioned Ms. Weatherbie, other painters influenced by Frederick Varley – either as students or contemporaries – include: Emily Carr, Charles Scott, Jock MacDonald, Irene Hoffar Reid, Beatrice Lennie.
Poem: “Varley at Jericho” by Dave Olson
Photographs: Kris Krug displays some Kodachrome photos from our exploration of addresses on Flickr, KK Varley tag.
Link Library: Further Frederick Varley reading: This link library contains dozens of links to Varley bios, critiques, histories, plus anecdotes from local historians and hikers. {note: broken :()
More Frederick Varley in this archive:
- Varley in Vancouver, Part 1: The Group of 7 “bohemian” heads west
- Varley in Vancouver, Part 2: Following Varley’s Trail from Jericho to Lynn
- Varley in Vancouver, Part 3: influencing and remixing art – join the Group of 7
- Pub: “Varley and Me” – Megaphone (Vancouver), Jan. 2012
- “Varley’s Vancouver: Discovering the City’s Artistic Heart in Frederick Varley’s Past” (in Megaphone Magazine, 2012)
- Varley at Jericho (poem)
- Portrait of Varley – Choogle On! #104 (podcast)
- Upon the Varley Trail – Postcard #83 (podcast)
- I walk the Varley trail often & brewing an idea of documentary… (idea)