Evert Collier (26 January 1642 – few days before 8 September 1708) was a
Dutch Golden Age
The Dutch Golden Age ( ) was a period in the history of the Netherlands which roughly lasted from 1588, when the Dutch Republic was established, to 1672, when the '' Rampjaar'' occurred. During this period, Dutch trade, scientific development ...
still-life
A still life (: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or human-made (drinking glasses, books, ...
painter
Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...
known for
vanitas
''Vanitas'' is a genre of symbolizing the temporality, transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, and thus the vanity of ambition and all worldly desires. The paintings involved still life imagery of transitory i ...
and ''
trompe-l'œil
; ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a Two-dimensional space, two-dimensional surface. , which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into perceiving p ...
'' paintings. His first name is sometimes spelled "Edward" or "Edwaert" or "Eduwaert" or "Edwart," and his last name is sometimes spelled "Colyer" or "Kollier".
Life
Collier was baptized Evert Calier in
Breda
Breda ( , , , ) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of North Brabant. ...
,
North Brabant
North Brabant ( ; ), also unofficially called Brabant, Dutch Brabant or Hollandic Brabant, is a province in the south of the Netherlands. It borders the provinces of South Holland and Gelderland to the north, Limburg to the east, Zeeland to ...
.
[Edwaert Collier]
in the RKD
The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: ), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center in the world. The center specializes in document ...
He was trained in
Haarlem
Haarlem (; predecessor of ''Harlem'' in English language, English) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the Provinces of the Nether ...
, where his earliest paintings show the influence of
Vincent Laurensz van der Vinne
Vincent Laurensz van der Vinne (1628–1702) was a Dutch people, Dutch Mennonite painter, linen-weaver, and writer.
Biography
Van der Vinne was born, lived and worked in Haarlem and was a student of Frans Hals for nine months in 1647. , who became a member of the
Haarlem Guild of St. Luke in 1649, and whose son
Laurens van der Vinne
Laurens Vincentsz van der Vinne (1658–1729) was an 18th-century painter from the Dutch Republic.
Biography
Van der Vinne was born and died in Haarlem. According to Houbraken, he was the oldest and artistically most gifted son of the pai ...
listed "Evert Colier" in 1702 as one of the Haarlem guild members who had known his father.
[De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lukasgilde te Haarlem 1497-1798, Hessel Miedema, 1980, ] Van der Vinne was probably his teacher when Collier registered with the Haarlem guild in 1664. They both later influenced the Haarlem still-life painter Barend van Eisen.
[
By 1667, Collier had moved to ]Leiden
Leiden ( ; ; in English language, English and Archaism, archaic Dutch language, Dutch also Leyden) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Provinces of the Nethe ...
, where he became a member of the Leiden Guild of St. Luke in 1673. He moved to Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...
by 1686 and to London in 1693. He returned to Leiden in the years 1702–1706, based on signed and dated works there, but was back in London at the end of his life where he was buried September 8, 1708 at St. James's, Piccadilly.
The Denver Art Museum
The Denver Art Museum (DAM) is an art museum located in the Civic Center of Denver, Colorado. With an encyclopedic collection of more than 70,000 diverse works from across the centuries and world, the DAM is one of the largest art museums betwe ...
, the Honolulu Museum of Art
The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. It has one of the largest single co ...
, the Indianapolis Museum of Art
The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) is an encyclopedic art museum located at Newfields, a campus that also houses Lilly House, The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, the Garden at Newfields and more. It is located at the corner of No ...
, the National Portrait Gallery (United Kingdom)
The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London that houses a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. When it opened in 1856, it was arguably the first national public gallery in the world th ...
, the Rijksmuseum
The Rijksmuseum () is the national museum of the Netherlands dedicated to Dutch arts and history and is located in Amsterdam. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough of Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the S ...
(Amsterdam), the Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...
and the Tate
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK ...
(London) are among the public collections having paintings by Evert Collier.
The US historian, Dror Wahrman, has written a book on Collier's ''trompe-l'œil
; ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a Two-dimensional space, two-dimensional surface. , which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into perceiving p ...
'' works, ''Mr. Collier's Letter Racks'' (OUP, 2014). The book brings together a wide range of the painter's still lifes from the late 17th and early 18th centuries, mostly from the time when Collier was living in London. Their themes were almost exclusively arrangements of journals, engravings, letters, medals, combs, sealing wax sticks and other ephemera, signifying an updating of the older '''' still life model.
Works
His works tend to be an arrangement of pieces of paper painted to "pop out" of the surface in a ''trompe-l'œil
; ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a Two-dimensional space, two-dimensional surface. , which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into perceiving p ...
'' fashion. Like Van der Vinne before him, he often included prints, but these tended to be popular prints of the day.
An oil on canvas painting (''Vanitas Still Life with Globe, Skull and Violin'') previously attributed to Collier was later attributed to Pieter Legouch.
File:Edward Collier 20171205.jpg, ''A trompe-l'œil still life of a letter rack'', 54 x 67.3 cm, includes a print after Staverenus
File:Petrus Staverenus - Five senses, a laughing man smoking a pipe (smell) 2019 CKS 17196 0150.jpg, ''Smell'', c. 1650, by Petrus Staverenus
# ''A Trompe-l'œil of Newspapers, Letters and Writing Implements on a Wooden Board'' (1699), 58.8 × 46.2 cm
# ''Edward Collier'' (1683), Oil on Canvas, 44.4 × 52.8 cm
# ''Still Life'' (1699), Oil on Canvas, 76.2 × 63.5 cm
# ''Still Life: The Smell'' (1695), Oil on Canvas, 24 5/8 × 20 1/2 in
# ''Still Life: Parliament'' (1695), Oil on Canvas, 24 1/2 x 29 3/4 in, M.S. Rau Antiques, New Orleans
# ''Still Life with a volume of Wither's Emblemes'' (1696), Oil on Canvas, 83.8 × 107.9 cm
# ''A Vanitas
''Vanitas'' is a genre of symbolizing the temporality, transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, and thus the vanity of ambition and all worldly desires. The paintings involved still life imagery of transitory i ...
''
# ''Vanitas'' (1662), Oil on Wood, 94 × 112.1 cm
# ''Vanitas Still Life'' (1684), Oil on Canvas, 99 × 123 cm
# ''Self Portrait with Vanitas Still Life'' (1684), Oil on Canvas, Honolulu Museum of Art
The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. It has one of the largest single co ...
# ''A Vanitas Still Life with a Flag, Candlestick, Musical Instruments, Books, Writing Paraphernalia, Globes, and Hourglass''(1662), Oil on Canvas
Notes
Attribution:
*
References
Netherlands Institute for Art History
(Dutch only)
*Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart / unter Mitwirkung von 300 Fachgelehrten des In- und Auslandes; hrsg. von Ulrich Thieme und Felix Becker (1907–1950)
*Adriaan van der Willigen en Fred G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-life Painters Working in Oils, 1525–1725, Leiden 2003
Further reading
* Tuominen, Minna: ''The Still Lifes of Edwaert Collier (1642–1708).'' Ph.D. thesis. University of Helsinki, 2014.
On-line version.
* Wahrman, Dror: ''Mr. Collier's Letter Racks'', Oxford University Press, 2014.
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Collier, Evert
1642 births
1708 deaths
Dutch Golden Age painters
Dutch male painters
Artists from Breda
Painters from North Brabant
Painters from Leiden
Painters from Haarlem
Dutch still life painters
Trompe-l'œil artists