John Varley OWS Figures on the Road to Church

An original early 19th-century watercolour painting, John Varley OWS, Figures on the Road to Church.

This peaceful rural view displays the delicate hand and subdued palette of influential English watercolourist John Varley OWS (1778–1842). Two figures, perhaps father and child, are walking in the distance, through the wide, unpaved village street, towards the church—the architectural focal point in this modest scene, where unremarkable brick cottages and gable ends create a sense of quiet realism. The painting has been hidden in an early Victorian folio so has not seen the open market before.

The specific location is unidentified; the provenance of the watercolour connects it with Staffordshire—and Varley did paint at Alton Towers in the county, but he also travelled quite widely, from his native Middlesex, to the villages north of London, to Cambridgeshire, and in Wales. Varley embraced imaginative compositions, in particular those revealing the inspiration of the Classical tradition, but the style of present painting is decidedly topographical. His work encapsulated the transition between tinted topographical drawing and the bolder, more fully developed manner characteristic of 19th century watercolour painting.

Varley was an accomplished teacher, who encouraged his pupils to paint in the open air, whilst also promoting the Picturesque theory of adapting nature to the requirements of composition. The pleasing sense of balance, proportion and light and shade in the present subject shows a sophisticated and exacting eye for artistic composition.

John Varley OWS (1778–1842) was an influential English watercolour painter, who was also an astrologer, and a good friend of William Blake's. Varley was one of the founders of the Old Watercolour Society, and he was a master in the medium, being particularly skilled in the art of overlaying flat washes of watercolour, to build up the pastoral landscape scenes that were his specialism. Varley was also an accomplished teacher, whose pupils included Copley Fielding, David Cox and John Linnell (Varley published A Treatise on the Principles of Landscape Drawing, and A Practical Treatise on the Art of Drawing in Perspective).

But it is for his interest in esoteric subjects, and his friendship with Blake, that Varley is best known today. In 1819-20 Varley and Blake collaborated on the book Visionary Heads, in which Blake drew the 'spiritual forms' of various famous historical and biblical figures (including Joan of Arc and Nebuchadnezzar), and creatures (including, famously, a flea), who appeared to him in visions, while Varley wrote the text, describing what happened as Blake 'saw' his subjects. Varley also wrote and illustrated an astrological text entitled A Treatise on Zodiacal Physiognomy, which attempted to explain differences in facial appearance with reference to the influence of the stars and planets.

On cream wove paper with partial J. Whatman Turkey Mill watermark. The watercolour is accompanied by—but is separate from—its historic backing paper with the inscription 'J. Varley'.