Evert Collier's Self-Portrait with a Vanitas Still-life

Evert Collier (26 January 1642 – few days before 8 September 1708) was a

Dutch Golden Age The Dutch Golden Age ( nl, Gouden Eeuw ) was a period in the history of the Netherlands, roughly spanning the era from 1588 (the birth of the Dutch Republic) to 1672 (the Rampjaar, "Disaster Year"), in which Dutch trade, science, and Dutch art, ...

still-life A still life (plural: 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 man-made (drinking glasses, boo ...

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

known for

vanitas A ''vanitas'' (Latin for 'vanity') is a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, often contrasting symbols of wealth and symbols of ephemerality and death. Best-known are ''van ...

and ''

trompe-l'œil ''Trompe-l'œil'' ( , ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface. ''Trompe l'oeil'', which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into ...

'' 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 city and municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Brabant. The name derived from ''brede Aa'' ('wide Aa' or 'broad Aa') and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. Breda has ...

North Brabant North Brabant ( nl, Noord-Brabant ; Brabantian: ; ), also unofficially called 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 the we ...

.Edwaert Collier
in the

RKD The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: RKD-Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center i ...

He was trained in

Haarlem Haarlem (; predecessor of ''Harlem'' in English) is a city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland. Haarlem is situated at the northern edge of the Randstad, one of the most populated metropoli ...

, where his earliest paintings show the influence of

Vincent Laurensz van der Vinne Vincent Laurensz van der Vinne (1628–1702) was a 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 The Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke was first a Christian, and later a city Guild for various trades falling under the patron saints Luke the Evangelist and Saint Eligius. History During the lifetime of Geertgen tot Sint Jans, there was probably a ...

in 1649, and whose son

Laurens van der Vinne Laurens Vincentsz van der Vinne (1658–1729) was an 18th-century painter from the Northern Netherlands. Biography Van der Vinne was born and died in Haarlem. According to Houbraken, he was the oldest and artistically most gifted son of t ...

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 and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration wit ...

, where he became a member of the

Leiden Guild of St. Luke The Leiden Guild of Saint Luke refers to three artist collectives in Leiden; the ''Leidsche St. Lucas Gilde'' dating from 1648, the newer ''Leidse Tekenacademie'' established in 1694, and the collective known as ''Ars Aemula Naturae'' (art compet ...

in 1673. He moved to

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

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 encyclopedic collections of more than 70,000 diverse works from across the centuries and world, the DAM is one of the largest art museums between t ...

, the

Honolulu Museum of Art The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. The museum has one of the largest single col ...

, 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: 100 Acres, the Gardens at Newfields, the Beer Garden, and more. It i ...

, the

National Portrait Gallery (United Kingdom) The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London housing a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. It was arguably the first national public gallery dedicated to portraits in the world when it ...

, 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 St ...

(Amsterdam) 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 U ...

(London) are among the public collections having paintings by Evert Collier. The US historian, Dror Wahrman, has written a book on Collier's ''

'' 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 'memento mori' still life model.

Works

His works tend to be an arrangement of pieces of paper painted to "pop out" of the surface in a ''

'' 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 Pieter Legouch (? – November 1664 (buried 22 November 1664)) also ''Legoes'', was a Flemish-born Dutch Golden Age still-life painter. His best known works are vanitas still lifes. Biography Name His name is variously spelled Pieter Legouch, Pi ...

. 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 Petrus Staverenus ( fl. 1624 – 1654) was a Dutch painter, who painted tronies in the manner of Frans Hals and Adriaen Brouwer. Little is known of his life. He became a member of the Confrerie Pictura in 1635.Vanitas A ''vanitas'' (Latin for 'vanity') is a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, often contrasting symbols of wealth and symbols of ephemerality and death. Best-known are ''van ...

'' # ''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,

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

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Collier, Evert 1642 births 1708 deaths Dutch Golden Age painters Dutch male painters People from Breda Painters from Leiden Painters from Haarlem Dutch still life painters Trompe-l'œil artists

Life

Works

Notes

References

Further reading

External links