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 which Charles I. gave to the fine arts, to visit England. He became state-painter to Charles II., who knighted him; and being a gentleman as well as a painter, that king took pleasure in conversing with him. He practised portrait-painting, and succeeded so well that he was preferred to all his contemporaries. Hence he was so much engaged in business, that he was prevented from visiting Italy to finish the course of his studies. However, he made himself amends, by getting the best drawings, prints, and paintings, of the most celebrated Italian masters. Amongst these were the greater part of the Arundel collection, which he received from the family of that name, many pieces of which were sold after his death at prodigious rates, bearing upon them his usual mark. The advantage which he reaped from this collection, the best chosen of any one of his time, appears from the admirable style which he acquired by daily conversing with the works of those great masters. In his correct drawing 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, and 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. He likewise excelled in crayon-painting. He was familiar with, and greatly respected by, persons of the greatest eminence in the kingdom. He became enamoured of a beautiful English lady, to whom he was some time afterwards 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 apoplexy in 1680, at London, and was buried at Covent Garden Church, where there is a marble monument erected to his memory.