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 ...
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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.
