Evert Collier

Dutch Republic·1642-1708

Evert Collier — baptized in Breda in 1642, and known also as Edward, Edwaert or Edwart Collier, with his surname sometimes given as Colyer or Kollier — was a Dutch still-life painter whose career moved between Haarlem, Leiden, Amsterdam and London. Trained in Haarlem, where he likely studied under Vincent Laurensz van der Vinne, he joined the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1664 before settling in Leiden, becoming a guild member there in 1673. By 1686 he was working in Amsterdam, and from 1693 he was based in London, with a return to Leiden between 1702 and 1706; he died in London in 1708 and was buried at St James's, Piccadilly. Collier is best known for vanitas paintings and, especially in his later London years, for trompe-l'œil still lifes: letter racks and pinboards crowded with newspapers, engravings, letters, medals, combs and sealing wax, rendered with an illusionistic precision that updates the older memento mori tradition into a display of everyday paper clutter. His work is held by the Rijksmuseum, the Metropolitan Museum, the National Gallery, the Mauritshuis, Tate and the Honolulu Museum of Art, among others.