The life and work of the famous portrait artist, whom his contemporaries called the “Russian Van Dyck”, were almost entirely connected with one city – St. Petersburg and one educational and art institution – the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts.

He studied at the Academy from March 1795 to September 1803, in the portrait class of S. S. Shchukin; here he worked after completing his studies: first as a pensioner he helped professors, then taught independently, from 1810 – with the title of academician, and from 1832 – professor.

Until the end of his days, Varnek was a member of the Council of the Academy of Arts; in the halls of the Academy at its periodic exhibitions he demonstrated his paintings, which aroused the constant interest of connoisseurs and lovers of painting, generating numerous responses in the press (in the magazines “Son of the Fatherland”, “Otechestvennye zapiski”, in the almanac “Northern Flowers” and other publications of those years).

There was only a relatively short period (from July 1804 to October 1809), which the artist spent away from St. Petersburg – in Rome, where he was sent as a pensioner of the Academy of Arts. And although Varnek’s artistic activity began back in 1802-03 (“Portrait of the actress E. I. Kolosova in the costume of Artemis”, portraits of the then young artists N. I. Utkin, A. V. Stupin, E. O. Skotnikov and A. Kh. Vostokov), his real creative debut took place in Rome.

It was here that he created his first programmatic work – “Self-portrait with a palette and brushes in hand” (1804). This painting was also one of the programmatic works of a new artistic movement – romanticism, which was formed in Europe in the first decade of the 19th century. Varnek became the exponent of this artistic movement in Russian painting along with O. A. Kiprensky and A. O. Orlovsky.

The mentioned self-portrait was the first in a series of self-portraits created over the following years – a kind of “autobiography in a portrait”, where the artist presented himself in various states, poses, among a variety of surroundings and accessories, in his youth or mature age. Such are “Self-portrait” (1810), “Self-portrait, lit from behind” (1816), which is a pair to “Portrait of M. I. Varnek, the artist’s wife” (1816), “Self-portrait in a velvet beret, with a drawing pen” (1810s), “Self-portrait with a pipe” (late 1820s), “Self-portrait in old age” (1830s), etc. Being an attentive physiognomist, well sensing and conveying the character of a person, his posture, gesture, facial expressions, the artist reveals the phenomenon of an individual personality, its uniqueness.

His portraits are distinguished by great stylistic diversity, dissimilarity of manner, which was inherent in the artists of the romantic trend, especially O. A. Kiprensky. Varnek’s portrait works are often combined into interesting “family” cycles – for example, “Portrait of the sculptor I. P. Martos” (1819) and “Portrait of the daughters of the sculptor I. P. Martos” (1810s) or three portraits of the children of A. R. Tomilov (all 1825).

Since the 1820s, the artist’s creative evolution has been on the decline, but he actively works as a teacher and expert on works of art (since 1824, he has been the custodian of the collection of drawings and prints in the Hermitage). Varnek’s artistic and pedagogical method as a whole contributed to maintaining high professional requirements in the Academy of Arts – knowledge of painting techniques, careful study of nature, and competent drawing.