 Neither his birth nor death date is certain, and archival evidence only exists in Middelburg for his membership in the Guild of St. Luke there from 1695 onwards, when he was fined for selling a painting without being a member of the guild.His works appear frequently in contemporary Middelburg taxation inventories

Coorte was apparently not well known to his contemporaries outside the small city of Middelburg and, like Vermeer a century before, he was almost entirely forgotten until the 1950s, when the Dutch art historian Laurens J. Bol revived his reputation, beginning with an article in 1952, and finally publishing the first monograph and "catalogue raisonné" on Coorte in 1977 ("Adriaen Coorte", Amsterdam).Bol arranged an exhibition of 35 examples of Coorte's work in 1958 at the Dordrechts Museum, which became a sensation in the Netherlands, with the poets Hans Faverey and Ed Leeflang both being inspired by the paintings.