John Collett

The recorded working language is English. Places of work recorded in the authority are London. Work by John Collett is recorded in the collections of Tate, Victoria and Albert Museum, Royal Museums Greenwich, Yale Center for British Art and London Museum.

He was born in London about 1725, and son of a gentleman holding a public office. He was a pupil of painter George Lambert, and studied at the art school in St Martin's Lane. He first exhibited at the exhibition of the Free Society of Artists in 1761, to which he sent three landscapes. In 1762, he exhibited with the same society A Gipsy telling some Country Girls their Fortune. From this time, though he occasionally exhibited landscapes, portraits, animals, and other subjects, his pictures are mainly of a humorous description, based on the style of William Hogarth, whose 'comedy in art' he strove to imitate, if not to surpass. There was a large demand for his pictures, and the engravings from them, many by first-class engravers, were published by Carington Bowles, Smith & Sayer, Boydell, and other well-known publishers. Collett continued to exhibit with the Free Society of Artists up to 1783. His pictures give insight into manners at the end of the 18th century. In 1775, Richard Brinsley Sheridan brought out his comedy The Duenna and Collett drew pictures based on scenes in this play. One of them, representing the drinking scene in the convent (act iii. scene 5), was figured in Thomas Wright's History of Caricature and Grotesque in Art. He inherited a fortune from a relation, and resided in Chelsea, London, where he died, in Cheyne Row, on 6 August 1780, and was buried there on 11 August.

Collet represented scenes of debauchery, low life, and social weaknesses and absurdities. He did not possess, however, the force and deep moral of Hogarth's work, and his pictures are often mere plagiarisms, appealing only to a vulgar taste. When, however, he cared to be original, he showed great ability, and his pictures are always carefully executed.