A toebakje still life of smoking utensils, a jug and a tall glass partly filled with beer

This early work by Edwaert Collier, executed the year he joined the Haarlem painter’s guild, belongs to a small group of toebakjes the artist painted in the 1660s and 1670s, another example of which is today in the John G. Johnson Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Each of these paintings features a limited number of recurring still life elements, including an earthenware jug bearing the arms of Amsterdam, a broken brazier, Gouda pipes and a pasglas – a tall glass marked with horizontal bands used in drinking games – artfully arranged atop a wooden table.

Collier’s rare toebakjes serve as striking testimony to the fertile sharing of ideas between artists working in different artistic milieus. While the majority of Collier’s work from the 1650s and 1660s suggests the prevailing influence of the Haarlem still life painters Pieter Claesz, Collier’s presumed master, and Vincent Laurensz. van de Venne, here he looks somewhat further afield to the Amsterdam still life painters Jan van de Velde and, in particular, Jan Fris. The present painting must have been known to Fris, who in turn painted a near copy of it the following year (fig. 1). In 1679, Collier himself executed a second version of this painting with slight differences on canvas (sold Lempertz, Cologne, 19-21 November 1981, lot 34).