Early life Varley was born in
Sheffield,
England, in 1881, the son of Lucy Barstow and Samuel James Smith Varley the 7th. He began his art training there in 1892, at the age of 11, studied art in
Sheffield (1892–1899) and attended the
Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in
Antwerp (1900–1902),
Belgium, while he worked on the docks. He emigrated to Canada in 1912 on the advice of another Sheffield native (and future
Group of Seven member),
Arthur Lismer, and found work at the
Grip Ltd. design firm in Toronto, Ontario and afterwards at Rous & Mann.
War artist Beginning in January 1918, he served in the
First World War with
C.W. Simpson,
J.W. Beatty and
Maurice Cullen. Varley came to the attention of
Lord Beaverbrook, who arranged for him to be commissioned as an
official war artist. He accompanied Canadian troops in the
Hundred Days offensive from Amiens, France to Mons, Belgium. His paintings of combat are based on his experiences at the front. Although he had been enthusiastic to travel to France as a war artist, he became deeply disturbed by what he saw, saying: Varley's
Some Day the People Will Return, shown at
Burlington House in London and at the Canadian War Memorials Exhibition, is a large canvas depicting a war-ravaged cemetery, suggesting that even the dead cannot escape the destruction.
Group of Seven In 1920, he was a founding member of the
Group of Seven. He was the only original member of the Group of Seven to specialize in portraiture, but he also painted
landscapes. Varley's major contribution to art is his work with the Group of Seven and his portraits.
Later life and death After living in Ontario for a number of years, Varley moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1926 where he became Head of the Department of Drawing and Painting at the
School of Decorative and Applied Arts in Vancouver at the invitation of
Charles Hepburn Scott. He remained in this position from 1926 until 1933. In British Columbia, he painted images of mountains and mountainsides, drawing upon several influences from Chinese painting to
William Turner and
Samuel Palmer. He left in 1936 due to his experiences with
depression, and two years later joined fellow artist
Terry Shortt, the
Royal Ontario Museum ornithologist, on a trip to the
Arctic in 1938. In 1954, along with a handful of artists including
Eric Aldwinckle, he visited the Soviet Union on the first cultural exchange of the Cold War. For the last twelve years of his life, Varley lived in
Markham,
Ontario, with Kathleen and Donald McKay. Kathleen nurtured Varley’s later artistic career by setting up a studio for him in the basement of her ancestral home, now the McKay Art Centre located at 197 Main Street
Unionville. After Varley’s death in 1969, Kathleen promised to donate her considerable collection of works by Varley and his contemporaries to Markham, to be housed in a gallery suitable for their display and preservation. That promise resulted in the building of the
Varley Art Gallery of Markham, which opened in 1997. He was buried alongside other members of the Original Seven at the
McMichael Canadian Art Collection grounds in
Kleinburg, Ontario. ==Recognition==