He received tuition at the Manchester School of Art and, inspired by David Cox's example, lived at Betws-y-Coed in northern Wales between 1864 and 1869.

[1][2] Collier was a close friend of Charles Stuart Millard, the Canadian-born painter (who moved to England before 1879 and was employed as an instructor at the South Kensington Art School, before taking up an appointment as Headmaster at the Cheltenham School of Art).

He was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in recognition of a painting sent to the Paris International Exhibition of 1878.

Collier was industrious, retiring and often in poor health, yet financially independent, able to work without pandering to popular taste and to travel at will into the Suffolk countryside.

[4][5] Collier died in Hampstead, London in 1891 and was buried in a family grave on the western side of Highgate Cemetery.