Edwaert Collier

Simon collection, The Netherlands;
Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Muller, 25 October 1927, lot 16;
With M. Wolff Gallery, Amsterdam, 1938;
Samuel Friedenberg, New York;
Anonymous sale, New York, Parke-Bernet Galleries, 23 April 1958;
Private collection, U.S.A.;
With Noortman, Maastricht & London, 1994;
Alfred & Isabel Bader, Milwaukee, until 2000.

Allentown, Pennsylvania, Allentown Art Museum, Seventeenth Century Dutch Painters of Haarlem, 1965, cat. no. 15.

N.R.A. Vroom, Schilders van het Monochrome Banketje, Amsterdam 1945, p. 204, no. 98 (with incorrect measurements), reproduced p. 172, fig. 156;
N.R.A. Vroom, A Modest Message as intimated by the painters of the 'Monochrome Banketje', vol. II, Schiedam 1980, p. 43, cat. no. 190;
The Detective's Eye: Investigating the Old Masters, exhibition catalogue, Milwaukee Art Museum 1989, pp. 111-112, cat. no. 50;
A. van der Willigen & F.G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-life Painters Working in Oils 1525-1725, Leiden 2003, p. 64.

The support consists of a single vertical oak panel, bevelled along the right and left hand margins and with a slight convex bow. The paint surface is clean and secure, with the details of the work well-preserved. When the painting was included in the exhibition at Milwaukee Art Museum in 1989, the painting was X-rayed. This revealed that the work was painted over a portrait of a man from approximately 50 years earlier. Some details of this portrait can be distinguished in the jug, where the paint surface is light and thinly painted, and in the lower third of the painting, due to unevenness on the surface. There is a small vertical surface crack upper right which measures approximately 6 cm. and extends 1cm. out to the right hand margin at both ends. No major damages to the work are apparent. Inspection under UV light reveals extensive retouchings to the work, which concentrate on and follow the areas and details of the portrait below which are/have shown through. Offered in a modern northern-style frame in good condition with a few minor knocks.
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This is an early work by Collier, which reflects the influence of still-life painters such as Jan van de Velde and in particular, Jan Fris.  It is close to several upright compositions by the latter dated 1660 and 1665, incorporating all of the same elements from the same restricted repertoire, and it reproduces almost exactly a work by him, signed and indistinctly dated, sold at Sotheby's in London, 29 June 1966, lot 98.

It is generally thought that Collier trained in Haarlem, but the closeness of his early works to those of Fris should perhaps give rise to speculation that he was a pupil of Jan Fris in Amsterdam, whose city coat-of-arms appear on the identical earthenware jug found in this and in Fris' works.