Vanitas Still-Life
by COLLIER, Edwart, Oil on wood, 94 x 112 cm
This painting is a fairly conventional, but well-conceived and well-composed, vanitas picture. The tipped over silver tazza and green-glass roemer (which with the watch recall still-lifes by Willem Claesz. Heda). The composition indicates that in his early twenties Collier had already mastered the syntax of a visual language in which earlier masters, including Pieter Claesz and Jan Davidsz de Heem, had expressed themselves.