Cornelius Varley

Cornelius Varley, FRSA (21 November 1781 – 2 October 1873) was a British painter, mostly in watercolour, printmaker and optical instrument-maker. He invented the graphic telescope and the graphic microscope.

Biography

Varley was born at Hackney, then a village north of London, on 21 November 1781. He was a younger brother of John Varley, a watercolour painter and astrologer, and a close friend of William Blake. He was educated by his uncle, a scientific instrument maker, and under him acquired a knowledge of the natural sciences. Around 1800, he joined his brother in a tour through Wales, and began the study of art. He was soon engaged in teaching drawing. From 1803 to 1859 he was an occasional exhibitor at the Royal Academy and he also contributed regularly to the displays of the Water-Colour Society, of which, in 1803, he was one of the founders, and of which he continued a member until 1821. He died in Hampstead on 2 October 1873.

Works Varley's non-scientific artistic works consist mainly of landscape watercolours; he was a founder member of the Old Watercolour Society, becoming the only founder-survivor left by the end of his life, although he had resigned in 1820, after the society divided. After this he devoted less time to landscape painting. He was "rejected unanimously" when he "rather surprisingly" applied to join the New Watercolour Society in 1844. His work has been described as "at once more traditional and more modern" than that of his brother: "his main interest seems to be in the building of his compositions from contrasting masses painted in even, unemphatic washes". He published a series of etchings of boats and other craft on the River Thames (Etchings of Shipping, 1809). He was the first person to make a telephoto image. As a printmaker, he was an early English user of lithography, though his works cannot be said to have made much use of the unique potential of the technique.

His life as an artist was deeply connected to his scientific and technical pursuits. His optical inventions were improvements to the camera lucida and camera obscura long used by artists, He also patented and sold his inventions.

The Society of Arts awarded him silver medals in 1831 and 1833, and the Isis gold medal in 1841, for improvements to microscopes.

Varley invented the graphic telescope in 1809, and patented it in 1811. this was his main occupation from 1814 onwards. He exhibited the graphic telescope at the Great Exhibition, winning a medal, in 1851.

He published Treatise on Optical Drawing Instruments in 1845.

He was one of the co-founders and contributors of the Royal Microscopical Society.