Sold for: $60,000

PROVENANCE
Lady Jean Brinckman (née Southam)
By descent to the present Private Estate, Ontario

LITERATURE
Christopher Varley, F.H. Varley: A Centennial Exhibition, Edmonton Art Gallery, 1981, the related canvas Church at Yale, BC, Royal BC Museum Collection, reproduced page 96
BC Archives, “Item PDP02221 – Church at Yale, BC,” the related canvas reproduced, https://search-bcarchives.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/church-at-yale-bc-1930

EXHIBITED
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, [Sixth] Annual Exhibition of Canadian Art, January 15 – February 28, 1931, the related canvas

In the summer of 1926, Frederick Varley accepted a position teaching painting at the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts and settled in a house on Point Grey Road. This was a momentous move for Varley and a fundamental shift in the history of painting in the province of British Columbia. Varley emphasized the importance of plein air painting in his teaching and changed the way the landscape of BC was understood. Varley spent considerable time hiking, camping and painting in this new environment. He was struck by the beauty of BC’s landscape and particularly the mountains and ocean.

Born in Sheffield, England, in 1881, Varley was always destined to be an artist. He trained initially at the Sheffield School of Art, beginning in 1892, when he was only 11 years old. After some excellent basic training in Sheffield, Varley enrolled in the Académie Royale des beaux-arts, in Antwerp (the same school that his future colleagues in the Group of Seven, Arthur Lismer and Franklin Carmichael, attended). Following work as a commercial illustrator in London, Varley, along with his wife, Maud, decided to immigrate to Canada.

The couple arrived in Canada in 1912; Varley found work in Toronto at the advertising company Grip Ltd. and subsequently at Rous & Mann. An accomplished commercial artist, Varley also joined the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto and met many artists. As early as 1914, he was painting with Tom Thomson, Lismer and A.Y. Jackson in Algonquin Park. The advent of World War I led to Varley being commissioned as a war artist in 1918. In 1918 – 1919, Varley produced some of the most celebrated images of the Canadian Forces in the war. After the war, Varley and his fellow artists held the first exhibition of the Group of Seven’s work, at the Art Gallery of Toronto (now the Art Gallery of Ontario) in May 1920. Varley had also been teaching with his colleague J.E.H. MacDonald and others at the Ontario College of Art.

Varley generally painted small oil panels and watercolours in the landscape; he used these studies done on the spot for his larger canvases, completed in the studio. Church in a Canyon, BC is a study done in the Fraser Canyon at Yale and depicts the church in that village. It is likely the historic St. John the Divine church, although there have been some alterations to the building since Varley depicted it (or he took some liberties with the architecture). What we clearly see is the vitality of Varley’s vision of the church set within the village landscape. The foreground is a whirling sea of foliage, and a vibrant tree stands before the church. Behind the building, the mountains of the Fraser Canyon tower above, and to the left is a winding path. Only a small piece of sky appears at the top of the painting, and the church spire looms upward within the composition.

Varley used this image as the source for an important painting, Ten, 1930 (now called Church at Yale, BC, collection of the BC Archives, PDP02221), first exhibited in 1931 at the Annual Exhibition of Canadian Art held at the National Gallery of Canada. Varley based his canvas on his outdoor study but refined and formalized the image. The composition introduces the signpost with the number 10, makes the tree in the foreground an image of autumn colour, and dramatically changes the background of the scene, replacing the mountains of the sketch with vaporous clouds rising behind the church. The two works are clearly related, but the sketch has a far greater immediacy and drama than the canvas. The church is much more imposing in this initial work. A vital and vibrant image of British Columbia, Church in a Canyon, BC gives us an important glimpse into Varley’s working process.

This exciting painting has a distinguished provenance from the Southam newspaper family.

This work is #143 in the Varley Inventory listing.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars