Watkin Williams, Bishop of Bangor

The portrait of Watkin Williams, Bishop of Bangor (c. 1892), represents Collier working within the established Welsh ecclesiastical portrait tradition that was periodically called upon throughout his career. Williams served as Bishop of Bangor, one of the ancient Welsh dioceses, from 1899 to 1907, making the dating of c. 1892 slightly puzzling unless this refers to an earlier period in Williams's ecclesiastical career before his elevation to the bishopric. Collier's Welsh episcopal commissions — this portrait and others — contributed to the visual record of the Church in Wales at a significant period when disestablishment of the Welsh Church was a major political controversy. The Welsh Church Act, passed in 1914, would separate the Church of England in Wales from the established church, and commissions for episcopal portraits in this period carry the weight of an institution aware of its uncertain institutional future. Oil on canvas, with the procedural attention to episcopal vestments and insignia that Collier brought to all his ecclesiastical subjects, this portrait likely shows Williams in full episcopal dress, combining the ceremonial and personal in the manner of Collier's best clerical portraiture.

Oil on canvas with careful rendering of episcopal vestments — the richly embroidered rochet and chimere or cope, the pectoral cross, and the mitre if present. Collier treats ecclesiastical dress as both a technical challenge (complex textiles, embroidered patterns) and a social statement, ensuring that the bishop's institutional identity is legible even to those unfamiliar with the sitter.