John Varley

John Varley (1778-1842) was a watercolorist and drawing master who was a significant figure in the early nineteenth-century London art world, closely associated with William Blake, John Linnell, and the group around the Ancients. Mulready's portrait of Varley records a friendship within the community of practicing artists in London during the Regency period, when the boundary between portraiture and genre was frequently crossed by painters who depicted their colleagues with the same attentiveness they brought to paying commissions. Varley was also a teacher of considerable influence, and Mulready may have known him through shared students or the Royal Academy.

Mulready brings to Varley's portrait the same careful facial modeling and alert physiognomic observation that distinguishes his best genre work — the face rendered with warm, carefully gradated tones that convey both likeness and character. His handling of the informal pose suggests a sitting conducted in friendly rather than ceremonial conditions.