Evert Collier

Evert Collier (26 January 1642 – few days before 8 September 1708) was a Dutch Golden Age still-life painter known for vanitas and trompe-l'œil 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, North Brabant. He was trained in Haarlem, where his earliest paintings show the influence of Vincent Laurensz van der Vinne, who became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke in 1649, and whose son Laurens van der Vinne listed "Evert Colier" in 1702 as one of the Haarlem guild members who had known his father. 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.

The Denver Art Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the National Portrait Gallery (United Kingdom), the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam), the Art Institute of Chicago and the Tate (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 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 trompe-l'œil 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.

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 (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 A Vanitas Still Life with a Flag, Candlestick, Musical Instruments, Books, Writing Paraphernalia, Globes, and Hourglass(1662), Oil on Canvas