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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,” were influential in reevaluating in Britain as an alternative model to the dominant aesthetic fostered by the Royal Academy, an institution that Linnell never joined.

Gallery label for installation of ycba collection, 2016