John Maler Collier was a British writer and painter in the Pre-Raphaelite style. He was one of the most prominent portrait painters of his generation.

John Collier was born in 1850 to a talented and successful family. The second son of the a member of Parliament, an Attorney General and for many years, a prominent judge. His grandfather, John Collier, was a Quaker merchant who also became a member of Parliament He was also a member of the Royal Society of British Artists. John Collier's elder brother, the second Lord Monkswell, was Under-Secretary of State for War and Chairman of the London County Council.

John Collier studied in Paris and Munich and although he never studied under Alma-Tadema or John Everett Millais, he was greatly influenced by the two artists.

During his life, Collier was one of the founding members of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, of which he became Vice President. He was also a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters. He exhibited at the Royal Academy and at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, as well as many others in galleries throughout the country and abroad. He also authored of three art technique books.

Collier was a very successful Pre-Raphaelite painter. After his death in 1934, his entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, 1949, compares his work to that of Frank Holl because of its solemnity. This is only true of his many portraits of distinguished old men. His portraits of younger men, women and children, and his paintings depicting scenes of ordinary life, are often very bright and fresh. His works now hang in the most prominent museums of our time.