(b London, 18 Sept 1788; d London, 17 Feb 1847). His father, also named William Collins (d 1812), a man of letters and dealer in pictures, was chronically poor. He saw sufficient artistic aptitude in his son to send him to study under his friend George Morland, by then neither capable of, nor interested in, teaching. Collins felt he learnt little until entering the Royal Academy Schools, London, in 1807. In 1809 he won the Royal Academy's silver medal for life drawing and in 1810 attracted some notice at the British Institution. He accompanied his father on picture-cleaning tours until the latter's death. By then Collins was producing genre pictures such as Bird-catchers (untraced). Typically sweet and unreal in its rustic imagery, it was exhibited in 1814 and bought by Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquis of Lansdowne, for a substantial 100 guineas. In 1814 Collins was elected ARA, an indication of his growing reputation. After a trip with James Stark to Norwich and Cromer in late summer and autumn 1815, he painted Shrimp Boys, Cromer (1816; untraced). Its success inspired him to exploit a potential market for coastal genre scenes that often contained some anodyne incident enacted by improbably well-scrubbed peasant children. A diary entry noted that although the actions and figures of 17th-century Dutch pictures would not be 'tolerated in any decent company', such works nevertheless taught important technical lessons. (Despite this, the colour of many of his pictures has changed because he used unstable pigments.)

Part of the Collins family

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William Collins may refer to:

• William Collins (poet) (1721–1759), an 18th century English poet
• William Collins (painter) (1788–1847), English landscape artist
• A clergyman character in Jane Austin's novel, Pride and Prejudice
• William Collins (publisher) (1789–1853), founder of the 18th century Scottish publishing house Collins, that became part of Harper Collins
• His son, Sir William Collins (Lord Provost) (1817–1895), a figure in the Scottish temperance movement and Glasgow's Lord Provost between 1877 and 1880
• Sir William Job Collins (1859–1946), British surgeon and Liberal Party politician
• William "Bootsy" Collins (born 1951), a pioneering funk bassist, singer and songwriter from Cincinnati, Ohio
• William Collins (naval officer), (1760?-1819), naval officer, explorer and shipowner
• William S. Collins - a land developer in Newport Beach, California
• William Collins (representative) (1818-1878), U.S. congressman from New York

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