Mr. Collier's Letter Racks by Wahrman Dror

Author:Wahrman, Dror
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2012-04-24T04:00:00+00:00

II

The first thing to point out is that a scenario in which Collier was not himself involved intimately with these paintings-signed-by-others is rather improbable. Unless, of course, we posit the existence of a sizable group of fans, coming from professional circles with especial appreciation for Collier’s skills, who followed this relatively minor artist around and copied his work with the aid of a list of guidelines that ensured the repetitive adherence to certain rules. A Collier Club.

This fantasy aside, the next plausible assumption is that Collier painted these canvases himself: hence their close and often intimate relationship to his signed work. Perhaps these paintings were an outcome of a market transaction, a service that Collier offered in his atelier to choice patrons and fellow masters of the brush. Boost your record: take home a painting painted by you. A decorator who wanted to start up a business could obtain a canvas to put on his wall as advertisement and proof of credentials. Or perhaps this was Collier’s idea of a gift to students or collaborators. Either way, in this scenario Collier would paint a composition with his own favorite elements and games, and while signing it in the name of the client or colleague he would also implant his monogram. Sometimes, presumably, Collier would also add certain touches specifically at the patron’s request: a print of Neptune here, a pair of playing cards there. Hence the particular details in some of these paintings that are quite unlike Collier’s own and not repeated elsewhere. Such paintings therefore were not intended for the open market but rather as presents or trophies for the people signed on them, like the one bearing the name of James Norie that was still a prized possession of the Norie family almost two centuries after its creation.

If these paintings were some kind of professional-courtesy-cum-service that Collier offered to house painters and decorators, this can account also for their geographical pattern. Three letter rack paintings appeared simultaneously in Edinburgh, in this scenario, when Collier traveled to Scotland and catered to a local group of house painters. This group then asked for certain variations on his usual designs to suit their own local political and personal interests. The paintings from the West Country may offer a further insight into Collier’s actual practice. Figure 8.12 (p. 150) shows a fourth near-identical canvas next to those signed with the names Collier, Palmer, and Field, carrying a “signature” letter that appears blank. I am saying this cautiously: only a photograph survives of this no longer traceable painting, which over a period of three centuries may have been tampered with, allowed to deteriorate, or restored badly. But if this painting does carry a blank letter where the others are signed, then perhaps it is a template. The book’s title page likewise seems to have been done by a less skillful hand, perhaps added to the blank template.14 We can imagine, then, Collier traveling to the West Country with several pre-prepared canvases of a

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