John Varley

John Linnell, 1792–1882

1820

Oil on panel

Yale Center for British Art

A man in a dark coat and white shirt sits holding an open book with illustrations. He is positioned in front of a landscape with trees and a cloudy sky. John Varley was one of the most prolific watercolor painters of the early nineteenth century and an inveterate teacher to both amateur and professional artists alike. He was also an avid astrologer with an insatiable enthusiasm for esoteric knowledge. He was one of John Linnell’s closest friends and, together with William Blake, they spent evenings together conjuring visions, mostly of prominent historical figures, which Blake would then sketch. In this portrait, Linnell consciously evokes Netherlandish paintings of the sixteenth century, paintings that Linnell and the artists in his circle, such as Samuel Palmer and “the Ancients,”