John Varley (1778-1842) [Aw304]
MILLBANK, 1816
Watercolour; signed and dated lower centre right: J. Varley 1816 (H. 29 cm, W. 40 cm)
John Varley was a prolific watercolourist and an influential teacher, whose students included David Cox (see cat. no. 26) and Peter De Wint (see cat. no. 19). He played a leading role in the establishment of the Society of Painters in Water Colour in 1804 and published several instruction manuals for amateur painters. Varley specialised in views of the Welsh mountains, which paid homage to Thomas Girtin (see cat. no. 11) in their technique and composition. The first part of his most extensive artist’s manual, A Treatise on the Principles of Landscape Design, was published in 1816, the same year that he painted this watercolour. The treatise set out a highly formalised approach to landscape, derived ultimately from the works of the French painter Claude Lorraine (c. 1600–1682). This river scene shows a different, more naturalistic side to Varley’s art.
The present work belongs to a series of eight watercolours of Millbank, an area of central London just south of Westminster, painted by Varley in 1816 and 1817. All of the watercolours in this group seem to have been drawn from direct observation and dispense with the classicising conventions that characterise so much of Varley’s work. The informality of this study is underlined by the unbalanced composition, the strong contrast of light and shade, and the ramshackle buildings alongside the Thames. The Millbank we see here, a thinly populated residential area with the Lambeth skyline visible in the distance, is very different from the one we know today, which is the product of an extensive reconstruction of the area in the 1930s.
Exhibited: Sotheby’s, London, Watercolours from Winchester College, 1988, no. 6
Provenance: Gift of Harry Collison, 1940