Early Life and Apprenticeship Richard Collins, born in the naval town of Gosport, Hampshire on January 30th, 1755, emerged into a world steeped in maritime tradition yet soon found his artistic calling far removed from shipbuilding. His early life offered little indication of the refined miniature painter he would become; however, it was through an apprenticeship with Jeremias Meyer that Collins’s path truly began to unfold. Meyer, a r…