- Philip Mercier
Philip Mercier (?1689 / 1691,
Berlin - 18 July 1760, London) was aportraitist active in England.Painter of portraits and a pioneer in England of conversation pieces and ‘fancy pictures’; an important figure in the introduction of French taste into England.
Life
Born in
Berlin but to a tapestry worker of FrenchHuguenot stock working for theElector of Brandenburg , he trained there from 1711 underAntoine Pesne , another French-born artist, who was working as Court Painter toFrederick I of Prussia . Mercier travelled for some time inItaly andFrance , familiarising himself with the work of Watteau (even etching and perhaps forging it) and acting as an art dealer in Watteau's works (holding, for example, a sale of pictures "collected abroad" inLondon in 1742). He then settled for good in England in 1715, receiving his first patronage from courtiers at the Hanoverian court, and eventually (from straight after Frederick's arrival inEngland fromHanover in December 1728)Frederick, Prince of Wales , for all of whom he producedconversation piece s and portraits. He was a member of the St Luke's Club between 1726 and 1735.He was made Frederick's Principal Painter (1729–36) and Library Keeper (1730–8), with the latter post also including buying pictures for the Prince's collection, but fell from royal favour within ten years and moved out of London, possibly to Northamptonshire, for a year during 1736–7. He then returned to London by October 1737, to focus on '
fancy pictures ' influenced by Chardin. In 1739 he moved toYork for 12 years, which proved his most productive period. There he painted portraits and sentimental domestic subjects, playing to subjects favoured by the print market (a "fancy" series by him, along with other works, were printed, mainly by Faber Jnr and Houston). He made visits toIreland (1747),Scotland (1750) andPortugal (1751–2, receiving English merchants' portrait commissions), finally returning toLondon in 1752, where he exhibited three works at the first summer exhibition at theRoyal Academy in 1760 before dying later that year.Marriages and children
#Margaret Plante, London, 1719
#Dorothy Clapham, London, 1735.His children were Charlotte (1738–62) and his son Philip, who both became artists.
External links
* [http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/person.asp?LinkID=mp07308&role=art Portraits by Philip Mercier] at the
National Portrait Gallery, London
* [http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=377&page=1 Paintings by Philip Mercier] atTate Britain
*John Ingamells & Robert Raines, ‘A Catalogue of the Paintings, Drawings and Etchings of Philip Mercier’, Walpole Society, XLVI, 1978, pp.1–70
*Exhibition catalogue for "Philip Mercier", put on by York City Art Gallery and Kenwood in 1969
*Elizabeth Einberg and Judy Egerton, The Age of Hogarth: British Painters Born 1675-1709, Tate Gallery Collections, II, London 1988
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