(Breda circa 1640 – circa 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 for confirming the attribution for the present painting.

In Lexikon der Holländischen Stilllebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert the entry about Collier reads as follows: “The painter’s vanitas still lifes betray 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 with one another. The pictorial elements employed by Collier, Vermeulen, and Van der Vinne include, among other objects, globes, skulls, pommers (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 to their symbols as legible warnings, for example ‘sic transit gloria mundi’ or ‘Vanitas Vanitatum et omnia Vanitas’.”