(Sir Peter), an excellent painter, born in Westphalia, in the year 1617. He was placed as a disciple with Peter Grebber at Haerlem; and in 1641 was induced, by the encouragement Charles I. gave to the fine arts, to come to England; he became state-painter to Charles II., who knighted him; and being as complete a gentleman as a painter, that king took pleasure in conversing with him. He practised portrait-painting, and succeeded so well that he excelled all his contemporaries; on which account he was always involved in business. Yet the critics remark, that he preserved in almost all his female faces a drowsy sweetness of the eyes peculiar to himself; for which he is reckoned a mannerist. The hands of his portraits are remarkably fine and elegantly turned; and he frequently added landscapes in the back grounds of his pictures, in a style peculiar to himself, and better suited to his subject than most men could do. He excelled likewise in crayon-painting. He died in 1680.