F.H. Varley,
Church in a Canyon, BC, 1929–30

Church in a Canyon, BC, 1929–30, is a small but powerful work by F.H. Varley (1881–1969) of the Group of Seven. The work shows a whitewashed wooden church set in the dense foliage of the Fraser Valley in British Columbia. Although it was painted relatively early in the artist’s time in the West, the work contains the signature elements of his mature BC style, including a cooler, more jewel-toned palette and an atmospheric, almost spiritual, interpretation of the landscape—qualities he explored increasingly following conversations with his fellow artist Vera Weatherbie. 

Varley used the energetically painted Church in a Canyon, BC as a study for the large-scale canvas Church at Yale, BC, 1930 (Royal BC Museum, Victoria). The church portrayed was located on the local First Nations reserve in Yale, which Varley also depicted in a pencil sketch.

Interestingly, Varley’s works were made around the same time that Emily Carr painted Church in Yuquot Village (formerly known as The Indian Church), now in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario—one of Carr’s most important works. She visited Yuquot in spring 1929 and painted her canvas sometime that summer, exhibiting it at the National Gallery of Canada for the first time in 1930. As Varley did not firmly date his sketch, it is impossible to know whose composition of a steepled white church set in the encroaching BC rainforest came first. Regardless, Varley’s sketch offers an interesting and important counterpoint to one of Carr’s most significant paintings, showing their kindred interest in describing the forest in faceted near-sculptural forms likely influenced by European Vorticism and Cubism.