COLLINS, Charles

Irish painter primarily of dogs, exotic birds, dead game and still-lifes, and, in Vertue’s phrase, ‘all sorts of Birds & Game & Fowls’. He was born in Ireland, and active in Dublin; described as ‘an Irish master’ in the catalogue of the sale of the collection of Sir Gustavus Hume in Dublin, May 1786. Painted numerous large studies of birds in watercolour and body-colour, some of which were engraved. He was one of the first still-life painters in Britain of great quality, normally following the continental tradition of arranged breakfasts, still-lifes or cabinets of curiosities, where objects of high value and ostentation were depicted.