Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Kerseboom, Frederick
KERSEBOOM, FREDERICK (1632–1690), painter, born in 1632 at Solingen in Germany, studied painting in Amsterdam, and in 1650 settled in Paris, where he worked under Charles Le Brun. He subsequently went to Rome, and remained there for fourteen years, two of which he spent under Nicolas Poussin, apparently engaged in landscape-painting. On leaving Rome he came to England, where he devoted himself to portrait-painting. His best-known portrait is that of Robert Boyle [q. v.], of which there are versions at the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Society, and Hampton Court; it was painted in 1689. Pepys, in a letter to John Evelyn, dated 30 Aug. 1689, writes that Boyle had ‘newly beene prevayled with by Dr. King to have his head taken by one of much lesse name than Kneller & a strangr, one Causabon.’ It is this letter perhaps that has led to the notion that Kerseboom was related to the great scholar, Casaubon. He painted a portrait of Sophia Dorothea, wife of George I, from which there is a scarce mezzotint engraving by William Faithorne, jun. A few other portraits by Kerseboom were engraved. Kerseboom died in London in 1690, and was buried in St. Andrew's Church, Holborn.
[Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, ed. Wornum; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Abecedario de P. J. Mariette; Chaloner Smith's British Mezzotinto Portraits; Pepys's Diary and Correspondence.]