Frederick ​Varley was born in Sheffield, England and studied at the
Sheffield School of Art and the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Belgium. 
​ He was encouraged by Arthur Lismer to move to Canada in 1912 and he started working for the Grip Ltd.  After WWI Varley went to France as an "overseas artist" painting many scenes of the battlefields and cemeteries.  
He moved to Vancouver and became the head of Department of Drawing and Painting at the
School of Decorative and Applied Arts (1926-1933) then he and Jock Macdonald opened a new school
"B.C College of the arts".   He returned to Ontario in 1936 and frequently traveled to the Arctic and Russia to paint.
Varley was a founding member of the Canadian Group of Painters. 
​ In Ottawa he taught at the Ottawa Art Association from 1936-1940 and travelled to the Arctic in 1938.  Varley was an original member of the Group of Seven.

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