Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/264

 be seen at his house in West Harding Street, in Goldsmith's Rents, near Three-legged Alley, between Fetter Lane and Shoe Lane’ (ib. p. 486). He now gained a considerable practice, and was made physician-in-ordinary to the king. In 1672 appeared the eighth edition of his ‘Advertisement concerning those most famous and safe cathartiques and diuretique Pills … wherewith was cured the late Lord-general Monck of the Dropsie.’ Sermon denies that Monck eventually died of the dropsy, ‘as many enviously report’ (cf., Life of Monck, pp. 246, 254, 476). Much of the book is repeated in ‘The Ladies Companion, or the English Midwife’ (1671, 8vo), which is illustrated with sixteen copper cuts, giving ‘the various forms of the childs proceeding forth of the womb.’ The author complains of ‘the great rage of black-mouth'd envy’ excited by his success. A third work, issued in 1673, was ‘A Friend to the Sick, or the honest English Man's preservative … with a particular discourse of the Dropsie, scurvie, and yellow jaundice.’ Prefixed to it are some Latin hexameters by P[ayne] Fisher [q. v.], and some English laudatory verses by various friends, including William Winstanley [q. v.]

Sermon died at his house in the parish of St. Bride's, London, in the winter of 1679. A portrait of him, drawn and engraved by William Sherwin [q. v.] in 1671, represents him in a doctor's gown at the age of forty-two. Under it are some doggerel lines, referring to his cure of Monck. It is prefixed to both ‘The Ladies Companion’ and the ‘Friend to the Sick.’ Wood calls him ‘that forward, vain, and conceited person.’

[Sermon's Works; Wood's Fasti Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 354; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Grad. Cant.; Granger's Biogr. Hist. of England, iv. 5.]

 SERRES, DOMINIC (1722–1793), marine-painter, was born in 1722 at Auch in Gascony, and was educated in the public school there. He is said to have been nephew of the archbishop of Rheims. His parents intended him for the church, but, this not suiting his taste, he ran away from his native town, and made his way on foot into Spain. He there shipped on board a vessel for South America as a common sailor, and eventually became master of a trading vessel to the Havannah, where he was taken prisoner by a British frigate and brought to this country about 1758. After his release he married and lived for a time in Northamptonshire. He had received some instruction in drawing, and commenced life in England as a painter of naval pieces, for which the wars of the period furnished abundance of subjects. He received some assistance from Charles Brooking [q. v.], and soon established a position. In 1765 Serres became a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists, and exhibited with them for two years. On the establishment of the Royal Academy in 1768 he was chosen one of the foundation members, and was a constant contributor up to the time of his death. Between 1761 and 1793 he exhibited eight works at the Society of Artists, twenty-one at the Free Society, and 105 at the Royal Academy. Among the latter were ‘The Siege at Fort Royal, Martinique’ (1769), ‘The Royal George returning from the Bay’ (1771), ‘The Burning of the Town of Gimras’ (1772), ‘The Thésée sinking while engaging with the Torbay’ (1777), and ‘The Engagement between the Serapis and the Countess of Scarborough with Paul Jones and his Squadron’ (1780). Serres was a good linguist. In 1792 he succeeded Wilton as librarian to the academy. He was also appointed marine-painter to George III, but he did not long hold these offices. He died in 1793, and was buried at St. Marylebone Old Church. He married about 1758, and left two sons, who followed his profession, John Thomas [q. v.] and Dominic, and four daughters, two of whom were honorary exhibitors at the Royal Academy. Paul Sandby was his friend and next-door neighbour.

There are several large sea-pieces by Serres (in bad condition) at Greenwich Hospital and at Hampton Court Palace; they do not sustain the reputation he enjoyed in his lifetime. A few of his water-colour drawings are at South Kensington Museum.

[Redgrave's Dict.; Edwards's Anecdotes; William Sandby's Thomas and Paul Sandby; Redgrave's Century; Graves's (Algernon) Dict.; Memoir of J. T. Serres, 1826, p. 7.]

 SERRES, JOHN THOMAS (1759–1825), marine-painter, elder son of Dominic Serres [q. v.], was born in December 1759, and followed his father's profession. He was for some time drawing-master to a marine school at Chelsea. In 1780 he began to exhibit at the Royal Academy, sending two water-colour views and a painting of Sir George Rodney engaging the Spanish squadron. In 1790 he went to Italy, visiting Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Genoa, Pisa, Florence, and Rome, where he passed five months, and then proceeded to Naples. After an absence of a little more than a year, he was recalled to England by a letter from Miss Olive Wilmot, the daughter of a house-painter at Warwick, to whom he had engaged himself before he left