Cornelius Varley

Leonard Gordon Duke (1890-1972);
by whom given to Cyril and Shirley Fry

This drawing is likely to have made with the help of Cornelius Varley’s 'Graphic Telescope', a scientific instrument that - like the camera obscura before it - allowed its user to project an image onto a sheet of paper or canvas. Varley was awarded a patent for his invention in 1811 and both he and his brother John made use of it when making portraits.

Of the surviving examples, many depict members of their immediate circle and scholars have wavered in attributing them to either artist. A portrait of John Sell Cotman looking straight out at the viewer was included, with a full attribution to John Varley, in Lowell Libson's seminal exhibition of 2005: Cornelius Varley, The Art of Observation.¹ Another portrait of Cotman, this time captured in the same position as in the present lot, in the collection of the Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, has, however, traditionally been ascribed to Cornelius.

1.  L. Libson et al., Cornelius Varley, The Art of Observation, London 2005, p. 165, no. 95