F.H. Varley

Portraits into the Light/Mise en lumière des portraits

Katerina Atanassova

• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781459720428
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

Frederick Horsman Varley was unique among the members of the Group of Seven. One of the greatest Canadian portraitists of the twentieth century, he is an intriguing example of an artist who, despite his fame as a portrait painter, remains better known for his landscapes. This is due mainly to his position as one of the founding members of the Group of Seven and their deliberate attempt to raise awareness of our national identity by depicting the Canadian landscape.

Even though many public collections across the country, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Vancouver Art Gallery, display some of Varley's best-known portraits, these works do not easily fit into the conventional mould of the Group of Seven. Nearly four decades after his death, Varley's portraits are still not fully acknowledged. The release of this beautifully illustrated bilingual volume coincides with the opening of an unprecedented exhibition of his portraiture.

CONTENTS

Lenders to the Exhibition

Message from the Director

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1: Beginnings in Victorian England, 1881–1912

Chapter 2: Portrait Painting in Toronto in the 1920s

Chapter 3: Public Faces: Society Portraits

Chapter 4: Private Faces: Children, Family, Friends

Chapter 5: Years of Teaching and Travelling, 1926–1950

Chapter 6: The Later Years, 1951–1969

Chronology

Works in the Exhibition

Selected Exhibitions

Endnotes

Selected Bibliography

Plates | Planches

LENDERS TO THE EXHIBITION

Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Kingston

Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton

Art Gallery of Greater Victoria

Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Arts and Letters Club, Toronto

Canadian War Museum, Ottawa

Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa

Hart House, University of Toronto

McCord Museum of Canadian History, Montreal

McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

RiverBrink Gallery, Queenston

Roberts Gallery, Toronto

Trinity College, University of Toronto

University of Alberta, Edmonton

Vancouver Art Gallery

Winnipeg Art Gallery

and various private collections

MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR

When the human spirit rises to excellence it can inspire you and leave you breathless. Good paintings do that; so do good stories. F.H. Varley was Canada’s leading portrait painter, as you will discover through the memorable images he created, the wonderful stories from his long and complex life and career, and the amazing people he met along the way, many of whom he immortalized in his portraits.

The Varley Art Gallery began with the dream of Kathleen Gormley McKay and the efforts of many of the Town of Markham’s political and community leaders. The quality of the gallery and the level of support it receives speak volumes about Markham’s high standards and achievements. Now in our tenth anniversary year, we celebrate our creation, our namesake, and our future with the exhibition F.H. Varley: Portraits into the Light and its companion publication. This is our first national touring show, and it will be seen from east to west, in Fredericton, Ottawa, Edmonton, and Kelowna.

The curator of the exhibition and author of the catalogue, Katerina Atanassova, is a dedicated researcher who approaches the subject of F.H. Varley with passion and insight. We believe that museum-goers and readers across the country will enjoy this opportunity to share in her findings.

Thank you to the Varley–McKay Art Foundation and the many volunteers who have built up resources for three years to make this exhibition and book possible. I also wish to convey our deep appreciation to the Museums Assistance Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage for their support of the research, touring costs, and publication.

John Ryerson

Director

Varley Art Gallery of Markham

FOREWORD

There is an extraordinary gap in Canada’s art history, and it seems entirely fitting that an admirable exhibition such as F.H. Varley: Portraits into the Light should set out to address the same gap in the understanding of Frederick Horsman Varley’s art. Surprisingly, that gap is portraiture. Our country’s long and merited love affair with landscape has allowed our equally fine and complex history of portraiture to be largely underestimated. Hence, the Portrait Gallery of Canada, a program of the Library and Archives Canada, responded with undiluted pleasure when approached by the Varley Art Gallery of Markham to support this venture to spotlight the Cinderella in Varley’s art and, indeed, in the history of Canadian art.

It may seem at first paradoxical, if not unfair, to say that Varley, long known as the one member of the Group of Seven who “did portraiture,” is in fact not properly acknowledged as a great portraitist. But even as fine resumés of his life as those penned by his grandson, Christopher Varley, for the National Gallery of Canada’s Canadian Artists Series in 1979 and for the Edmonton Art Gallery’s exhibition catalogue of 1981, leave a sense that his portraits were often expedients to which F.H. Varley resorted when in need of funds. The landscapes tend to find a preferred place in the extended critical discourse of his most accomplished work.

If a national history of portraiture were more developed, might Maria Tippett’s essential biography of Varley, published in 1998, have been able to make more than one brief reference to portrait photographer Alex Castonguay? He was a friend of Varley’s during the Ottawa years of 1936 to 1940, a time in which Yousuf Karsh recalled Castonguay’s expressed admiration for his own youthful work. Was there any contact between the flamboyant middle-aged painter who admired Augustus John and the equally flamboyant young Armenian immigrant who was bringing a new Art Deco sensibility and psychological incisiveness to photographic portraiture? It would not have been unusual, given Varley’s connections with photographer John Vanderpant and erstwhile photographer Harold Mortimer-Lamb in British Columbia. But such a question needs the context that a history of Canadian portraiture might furnish.

Varley painted an impressive variety of portraits, and as much as his landscapes and narrative works, they pulse with the life of his ideas and intuitions, his obdurate, unbreakable spirit, and his profound engagement with the life around him. He stands between the tender insight of Ozias Leduc in the nineteenth century and the unique expressionism of Harold Town in the modern era, two other Canadian artists whose portraiture is honoured more in the breach. This enticing gathering and review of his portraits by Katerina Atanassova, curator of the exhibition, unveils much that is new and shows how greatly such a reassessment was needed, and how richly rewarding the project has been. The Portrait Gallery of Canada is delighted to have been able to participate in this fresh and fruitful look at one of our own great portrait masters — F.H. Varley.

Lilly Koltun, PhD

Director General

Portrait Gallery of Canada

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This publication and the touring exhibition F.H. Varley: Portraits into the Light could not have happened without the help and generosity of many individuals. The initial spark came from a lecture on the Group of Seven’s first exhibition, delivered by Dennis Reid, Director, Collections and Research and Senior Curator of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario. The idea lay dormant until 2004 when plans were being made for the tenth anniversary of the Varley Art Gallery of Markham. These plans were strongly supported by the Gallery Board and by Director John Ryerson, to whom I owe my deepest gratitude. I also wish to acknowledge Joan Murray, who was the designated curator for this project at its inception, and Andrea Kirkpatrick, whose extensive research on Varley’s portraits from 1919 to 1926 provided the basis for my further study of the subject.

During the later stages of my research, I had an opportunity to examine the wealth of archival material compiled by the artist’s son Peter Varley and deposited at the Archives of the National Gallery of Canada, including the complete inventory of works and the oral history interviews recorded in 1969–70. My deepest gratitude to Julie Varley for granting access and allowing me to quote from the interviews in this publication.

I am grateful to many scholars and colleagues across the country, from whom I have learned a great deal about Fred Varley and the develo...