Mezzotint-engraver, painter and art dealer(?). He worked as a mezzotinter in Amsterdam and London mostly in the 1680s. He probably was employed by Browne and Tompson on their plates. Vertue recorded that "Jan van Somer the mezzotinter has done an abundance of plates after Sr Peter Lilly ... he was prodigious quick. He has in a long summers day very near begun & finished a half length plate. He used to work hard & set close to for many hours together" (Vertue I p.35).
Either he or his son was perhaps the nephew of Paulus van Somer II (qv), who appointed a 'Jean van Somer' as his residuary legatee in 1714.
en
)
