(Breda c. 1640 – c. 1707 Holland)
A vanitas still life with an open book, a globe, a nautilus goblet, a violin and precious objects,
oil on canvas, 98 x 122 cm, framed

We are grateful to Fred Meijer of the RKD, The Hague for confirming the attribution of the present painting.

In the Lexikon der Holländischen Stilllebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert the entry on Collier reads as follows: ‘The painter’s vanitas still lifes portray both a vivaciously painterly rhythm of the brush and a meticulous and fragmented manner of painting […]. Edwaert Collier’s vanitas art shows striking similarities to works by the painters Vincent Laurensz. van der Vinne and Jan Vermeulen in terms of motifs and composition, and so it must be assumed that these three artists were in close contact to one another. The pictorial elements employed by Collier, Vermeulen, and Van der Vinne include, among other objects, globes, skulls, wind instruments, crown jewels, measuring and musical instruments, books, and flowers. Moreover, for the renderings of documents and books, they chose papers or pages containing appropriate texts, which they added as legible warnings, for example ‘sic transit gloria mundi’ or ‘Vanitas Vanitatum et omnia Vanitas’.’