SIR PETER, an eminent painter, was born in Westphalia in the year 1617. He was placed as a disciple with Peter Grebber at Haarlem; 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 was preferred before all his contemporaries. Hence he became perpetually involved in brawls; so that he was thereby prevented from going into Italy to finish the course of his studies, which in his younger days he was very desirous of; however, he made himself amends, by getting the best drawings, prints, and paintings, of the most celebrated Italian masters. Among these were the better part of the Arundel Collection, which he had from that family, many whereof were sold after his death at prodigious rates, leaving upon them his usual mark of P. L.—The advantage he reaped from this collection, the best chosen of any one of his time, appears from that admirable style which he acquired by daily conversing with the works of those great masters. In his correct draught and beautiful colouring, but more especially in the graceful airs of his heads, and the pleasing variety of his postures, together with the gentle and loose management of the draperies, he excelled most of his predecessors. 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 backgrounds 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 was familiar with, and much respected by, persons of the greatest eminence in the kingdom. He became enamoured of a beautiful English lady, to whom he was some time after married; and he purchased an estate at Kew in the county of Surrey, to which he often retired in the latter part of his life. He died of an apoplexy in 1685 at London; and was buried at Covent Garden church, where there is a marble monument erected to his memory, with his bust, carved by Mr Gibbons, and a Latin epitaph, written, as is said, by Mr Flatman.