"The artist's job is to unlock fetters and release spirit, to tear to pieces and recreate so forcefully that…the imagination of the onlooker is awakened and completes within himself the work of art."
- Letter from Varley to his sisters Lili and Ethel, February 1936

F.H. Varley approached art as a spiritual vocation. His interest in figurative art as well as landscape set him apart from many Canadian artists of his time. As a mature artist, he attributed psychological qualities to the unusual colours he used.

Varley enrolled at 11 in the Sheffield School of Art, Yorkshire, England. In 1900-02, he excelled as a student at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, Antwerp, Belgium. He worked as a commercial artist in Canada, socializing and sketching with Group of Seven members.His service during World War I as a war artist affected him deeply. Varley found parallels between art making and other creative activities, particularly music. From the early 1920s, he used colours unconventionally in his art, particularly in portraits (Vera, 1931), believing that they conveyed psychological states. He studied Munsell's colour system, Wilhelm Ostwald's Colour Science, and Vernon Blake's The Art and Craft of Drawing. Varley was influenced by Buddhism and Theosophy. He visited the Arctic in 1938, and the Soviet Union in 1954.

Frederick Horsman Varley emigrated to Toronto from England in 1912. He worked as a commercial artist in Toronto, and joined the Group of Seven. In 1918-20 he served as a WWI war artist (Some Day the People Will Return, 1918, Canadian War Museum). Varley taught art in Toronto in the early 1920s, exhibiting with the Group of Seven. His most famous work, Stormy Weather, Georgian Bay (1921), was painted after a summer at Georgian Bay. His art was transformed by his residence in British Columbia in 1926-1936 . Thereafter he struggled to survive in Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto. From 1944 Varley lived in Toronto, visiting British Columbia on painting trips.

Awards


1930 Varley's portrait Vera wins Willingdon Art Competition prize, is exhibited at Royal Academy Schools, London, U.K. until 1932