Stormy Weather: FH Varley, a Biography

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is also the
author of The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek, and
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Hom

Frederick Horsman Varley (1881–1969) is one of the lesser-known
members of the Group of Seven, yet one of the most interesting. His
reputation rests on his achievement as a war artist during World War I,
as well as on his striking portraits and landscapes.

Born and brought up in Sheffield, England, Varley received a good art
education, first in Sheffield and later in Antwerp at the Academie
royale des beaux-arts. He emigrated to Canada in 1912. Through Arther
Lismer, a former Sheffield friend, Varley found employment as a
commercial illustrator and met Tom Thomson and Frank Carmichael. His
love of portraiture set him apart from other members of the Group of
Seven, and he remained odd man out. This book’s cover
illustration—one of Varley’s superb landscapes, Stormy Weather,
Georgian Bay—can be seen as an expression of Varley’s tempestuous
life: his perennial struggle to earn a living by his art, his binge
drinking and womanizing, his gross neglect of his wife and children.

Varley’s life and times are skilfully evoked by Maria Tippett, a
writer, curator, and cultural historian, whose previous books include
Emily Carr, a Biography and By a Lady: Celebrating Three Centuries of
Art by Canadian Women.

Her book—the first authoritative biography of the painter—includes
eight pages of paintings reproduced in full color and another eight
pages of black-and-white photographs. Highly recommended.