Varlin Painted the Margins, and He Painted Them Often

The obvious answer is Paris nightlife. The fuller one is stranger. Varlin returned to a small set of motifs across five decades, and each one says something different about how he looked.

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The short answer

The most common subjects in Varlin's paintings are street and café scenes from Paris, circus and cabaret performers, prostitutes and other figures on the edge of the city, cats, and self-portraits. He worked across roughly five decades and returned to these few motifs repeatedly rather than widening his range.

The Street as His First Subject

Varlin, the Swiss painter Willy Guggenheim, spent formative years in Paris between the wars, and the city never left his work. His most recurring subject is the street itself: pavements, kiosks, café terraces, the backs of buildings that guidebooks ignore. He painted the Paris of small trades and small pleasures, not the monuments. A viewer looking for the Eiffel Tower will usually find a laundry line instead.

This matters if you are reading his work before buying a print. A Varlin street scene is social but not cheerful. The figures are often alone even in company, and the palette runs muted, greyed, sometimes sour. That tone is the point of the work, and it is worth sitting with before deciding it suits a room. If it does, a street composition carries more narrative weight than a pure landscape would, which is why the landscape edition reads as his quieter register.

Performers, Outsiders and Cats

The second cluster of subjects is people who work at night. Circus riders, clowns, cabaret singers, prostitutes. Varlin drew these figures with sympathy but without sentimentality, often giving them heavy bodies and tired faces. He was himself an outsider in Paris, a Swiss with little formal training, and the identification shows. These are the works where his line loosens and his colour warms.

Then there are the cats. Varlin painted them constantly, as companions and as stand-ins for himself, lounging or watchful in interiors. And he returned to the self-portrait throughout his life, an unflattering one, more confession than vanity. Anyone asking what Varlin's art usually depicts should count these three together, because they share one trait: the subject is always a survivor. For a wall, a single figure from this group holds a small room better than a crowded street scene, a point developed in the guide to sizing a print for a small bedroom.

His recurring motifs

Paris street and café scenes painted from the pavement level of ordinary life
Circus, cabaret and carnival performers shown mid-work rather than mid-trick
Prostitutes and marginal figures rendered with plain, unsentimental dignity
Cats and self-portraits, often in the same interiors, often sharing a mood

How the Motifs Read on a Wall

Knowing the subjects is half the answer. The other half is how they behave as decor. Varlin's street scenes are busy and low-contrast, so they sit well in rooms with plain furniture and do the visual work themselves. His performer and cat pictures are tighter compositions with a single focal figure, which makes them easier to hang at eye level in a hallway or beside a reading chair.

His palette is the deciding factor in most rooms. It leans earthy and greyed, with occasional acid accents, so it flatters warm neutrals and can go muddy against strong colour. A cool-toned room will pull his greys colder, which some readers want and some do not; the piece on warm versus cool rooms works through that in detail. If the thematic overview has done its job, the choice between formats comes down to texture, and the canvas versus framed poster comparison settles it plainly.

He painted the Paris that guidebooks walk past, and he kept painting it for fifty years.

Subject	Mood	Suits best
Paris street scenes	Busy, muted, observational	Plain rooms that need a focal point
Performers and outsiders	Sympathetic, unsentimental	Hallways and reading corners
Cats and self-portraits	Intimate, wry	Small rooms hung at eye level

Varlin's recurring subjects at a glance

Key takeaways

Varlin's core subjects are Paris streets, café life, circus and cabaret performers, prostitutes, cats and self-portraits.
He narrowed his range early and mined it for decades, which gives the work a consistent voice.
His muted, earthy palette means subject choice matters less than room colour when hanging a print.
Single-figure compositions suit small spaces better than his crowded street scenes.

Related questions

Was Varlin a Paris painter or a Swiss painter?

Both, in sequence. He was Swiss by birth and spent significant years in Paris, where the street and cabaret subjects that dominate his work took hold. He later returned to Switzerland, but the Paris motifs stayed with him, so the two labels describe one career rather than two phases.

Did Varlin paint landscapes too?

Occasionally, and they are the quieter side of his output. The street and figure work is what he is known for, but landscape compositions exist and tend to carry the same muted palette and slightly melancholy mood as the rest of his pictures.

Why did Varlin paint cats so often?

Cats appear throughout his work as companions and as a kind of self-image, watchful and self-contained. He identified with the animal in the way many figurative painters have, and the cat pictures are among the most personal and most collected of his recurring subjects.

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