Background
He was born at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire and was the son of a bookseller.
He was born at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire and was the son of a bookseller.
He entered the Royal Academy School, and was also a fellow-student with Holman Hunt, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Collinson was a devout Christian who was attracted to the devotional and high church aspects of Pre-Raphaelitism. During his period as a Pre-Raphaelite, Collinson contributed a long devotional poem to The German and produced a number of religious works, most importantly The Renunciation of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary (1850).
Returning to his artistic career he painted a number of secular genre paintings, the best-known of which are To Let and Foreign Sale, both of which lightheartedly depict pretty women in situations that suggest moral temptation.
He was secretary of the Society of British Artists from 1861 to 1870. In the latter part of his life he lived in Brittany, where he painted The Holy Family (1878).
He died in April 1881.
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.