John Varley, The Founder of the Watercolor School of Painting
I am asked to furnish some few notes in respect to the celebrated water-colour painter, John Varley, with whom I was intimate. John Varley was a remarkable man in many ways and of many minds, and is generally referred to as the founder of the School of Water Colour Art. The works of his latest period were very effective and highly appreciated, for he had invented the means of giving a more powerful rendering of his landscapes, which be humorously explained in this wise:—“You see,” he would say, “I just call at my doctor’s and get some of the paper in which his assistants wrap up the bottles; this I paste on an ordinary mount. I then go to my baker and purchase some of the brown paper generally used for putting round his biscuits and buns; this I paste over the doctor’s paper, and the baker’s brown paper forms an already toned basis for my colours. When I want a high light, I rub up the place in the baker’s paper down to the white doctor’s paper. I make my drawing in brown, which afterwards I tint over with the requisite colours; thus I am able to work rapidly and to produce the powerful effects you admire, and which give to the water-colour drawing more the character of an oil painting.”
Varley was an astrologer, but mostly gave his divinations without drawing the usual figure, and he seemed to arrive at his conclusions more by insight than from the conjunctions and influence of the stars. I have heard him name particular incidents in a stranger’s life most correctly. The most remarkable instance of such life-reading-insight, so to term it, is recorded in the autobiography of the famous Swiss historian, philosopher and philanthrophist, Zschokke, not the mere reading of the present thoughts of a chance stranger, but events in the past life long latent in the memory.
My first introduction to Varley was in the Water Colour Exhibition. I had purchased one of his most effective drawings, still in my possession, and was introduced to the artist, who shook me heartily by the hand—he did all he did heartily—and asked me about my birth. Then he said, with all earnestness, that our relative conjunctions were so and so; that crossing that, and coming into conjunction with so and so, or the like; he surprised me not a little, and the more so when he concluded that I was destined at that time to be the purchaser of one of his most happy productions, also to be his friend for life, and do him much valuable service; and so it actually happened.
At that time Varley was about forty-five; ho was of a stout figure in “the fifth age of life.”—“And then the justice in fair round belly with good capon lined,” but not with “eyes severe,” or “beard of formal out,” for he had laughter in his eyes, a genial word and smile for all, and no hair on his face.
Then from the artist and the astrologer we must turn to the mechanic and inventor. His inventions wore all ingenious, but never practical, and on them he lost the money gained by his painting, and friends often suffered along with him. One of his latest ideas was to prevent the noise in cabs by having double wheels, one a little in advance of the other, so that the cab would always be resting on a level, as it were, and so prevent the fall and rumble, but this invention too went to pave the hall of good intentions.
But I must not prolong the story to which hie nephew, the present Varley, the celebrated electrician, and deeply divining Spiritualist, gives a special interest. “Young artists,” he would say, “purchase some of my small effective bite, and think to be able to do the like; but they must purchase the genius of John Varley, rather than seek to copy his work. Now there is John Brown,” he added, “a clever painter in some respects, but he wants as much talent again to make use of that which he has.” Varley used to tell stories of his friend Blake the painter, and Mrs. Blake, how the two sat naked in the garden in primitive innocence and simplicity, as with Adam and Eve before the fall. There are many more little anecdotes and incidents I could relate of this remarkable man, who used to come to me continually with his folio of drawings to show, saying, “You see, Mr. Atkinson, it takes me more time to sell the drawings than to paint them.” The market value of those drawings now, is six or seven times the amount that was given for them. I had a great many, and still possess some of the choicest specimens.
4, Quai de la Douane, Boulogne-sur-Mer.
<Untitled> (The late Mons. C. G. Hue advocated...)
The late Mons. C. G. Hue advocated the following doctrine:—“For faith—God. For feeling—Prayer. For restraint—The Conscience. For law—Charity. For belief—Immortality. For aim—Perfection.”
Next Sunday evening Miss Keeves will give a trance address at the Ladbroke Hall, Notting Hill, and this (Friday) evening, at seven o’clock, Mrs. Olive will give a seance in aid of the fund for carrying on the services.
Editor's notes
Sources
-
London Spiritualist, No. 486, December 16, 1881, p. 294