Edwaert Collier

Count Edward Raczynski, Warsaw and London;
Mr. and Mrs. Fielding Lewis Marshall;
Their sale, London, Bonham's, 28 March 1974, lot 28;
Anonymous sale ("Property of a Gentleman"), London, Sotheby's, 17 December 1998, lot 39;
There purchased by the present collector.

On loan to the William Hayes Ackland Memorial Art Center, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, no. L-61.4.7 (according to a label on the reverse);
London, Sotheby's, The Marshall Collection, 31 December 1973 - 8 January 1974, cat. no. 19, reproduced.

E. Zarnowska, La Nature morte hollandaise, Brussels/Maastricht 1929, p. 11 (as dated 1665).

The painting is slightly brighter than it appears in the catalogue illustration. For a high resolution digital image, please refer to the online catalogue at Sothebys.com or contact a member of the Old Master Paintings department. The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has a fairly recent lining and strong older stretcher. The original canvas has a very fine weave, visible in places through the smooth thinly painted darks of the background. There are occasional signs of rolling at some moment in the past, which has left brief creases at the upper left edge. The present surface is rather dim with a few minor superficial splashes, a slightly brown previous varnish and one minor recent surface scratch near the mid left edge, in the background. The underlying paint is largely beautifully intact. The books are magnificently crisp and unworn, with the detail exceptionally well intact. There are two old damages quite smoothly integrated comparatively recently by the lining and accompanying restoration. One is a slanting tear near the top of the two globes, which is narrow leaving the globes undisturbed otherwise, the other is a wider old damage in the dark background towards the lower right corner, beneath the ledge of the table near the corner of the larger book. Apart from these any other retouching appears to be strengthening surface touches in the darker browns, almost entirely in the background. Visible under ultra violet light, these are mainly in the upper background, (with one short vertical retouching in the middle of the top edge, possibly a scratch or crease), some reinforcements near the candle - leaving the wisps of smoke untouched - around the vanitas inscription at lower right and in the central darks between the two books, as well as the darks in the foreground here and there. Browns are always most liable to be vulnerable, but overall this painting has remained in unusually good condition almost throughout. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This is an early work by Collier, painted when he was only twenty years old, and during a period when he produced some of his finest work.  He was probably still in Haarlem where he is thought to have trained and is first recorded in a list of guild members.¹  His residence in Leiden is fully documented from 1667 to 1693, after which he left for London where he worked until returning to Leiden from circa 1702 to 1706.  He apparently returned to England as his last known work is dated 1707 and inscribed fecit London.

Collier produced vanitas still lifes throughout his career.  Here he has included many of the standard elements that would have been readily recognizable to his audience:  the burning candle, pocket watch and hourglass (denoting the passage of time and brevity of life); the violin with a broken string (the transient pleasure of music); the money bag (worldly riches); the scholarly books and globes (the vanity of learning); and the military flag (worldly power).  Wealth, knowledge and power are all earthly, temporary and ultimately meaningless.  Should anyone somehow miss the point, Collier has included the archetypal text of all vanitas still lifes on a piece of paper at far right: Vanitas/Vanitatu(m)/Et Omnia/Vanitas [Vanity of Vanities, All is Vanity], (Ecclesiastes 1:2).

Two other similar vanitas still lifes by Collier dated 1662 can be found in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Inv.no. 71.19) and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (Inv. no. SK-A-3471).

1.  See A. v.d. Willigen and F.G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-life Painters Working in Oils, 1525-1725, Leiden 2003, p. 64.