Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mercier, Philip
MERCIER, PHILIP (1689–1760), portrait-painter, was born at Berlin in 1689 of French parents. He studied art in the academy of painting there, and also under the court painter, Antoine Pesne. He then visited Italy and France, and finally came to Hanover, where he painted a portrait of Frederick, prince of Wales, and was appointed page of the bedchamber to the prince. About 1716 he came to London, bringing this picture and a recommendation from the prince. His expectation of obtaining employment at the court was not realised until the arrival of the Prince and Princess of Wales in England. He was appointed in 1727 principal painter, and subsequently also librarian to their royal highnesses at their house in Leicester Fields. In 1728 he painted the prince and his sisters, the princesses Anne, Caroline, and Amelia, at full length (all engraved in mezzotint by J. Simon). He also gave the princesses lessons in drawing and painting. About 1737 Mercier fell out of favour with the prince, was dismissed, and retired for a time into the country, but soon resumed practice in Covent Garden as a fashionable portrait-painter, and regained his position in the prince's household. Subsequently he resided for some years at York, until he was induced to go to Oporto in Portugal. There he found so much profit in painting leading merchants, that he sent for his family, intending to settle there. He soon, however, returned to London, and after a visit to Ireland died in London on 18 July 1760, aged 71.
Mercier was a painter whose merit has hardly been sufficiently recognised. In his earlier works he was distinctly an imitator of Watteau, and caught some of his spirit. His portraits and conversation-pieces, which are very pleasing, have sometimes been credited to Hogarth, though they have none of the strength and directness of purpose shown by that great painter. He painted a large number of half-length pictures representing young men or women employed in domestic or rural occupations, or with emblematical meaning; these were frequently drawn from his own children, and many of them were engraved in mezzotint by J. Faber, jun., R. Houston, J. McArdell, and other engravers. Many notable people sat to him, such as Peg Woffington (now at the Garrick Club) and Handel (now in the possession of the Earl of Malmesbury). His small conversation-pieces are to be met with in private collections. At Belton House, Grantham, there is a signed picture, representing John Brownlow, viscount Tyrconnel, and his family in a garden with Mercier sketching them. There are some characteristic drawings by him in the print-room at the British Museum. Mercier executed a few etchings in the style of Watteau, including a group of himself, his wife, and two of his children. His own portrait, painted by himself in 1735, was engraved in mezzotint by J. Faber, jun., and a poor copy was made of this for Walpole's ‘Anecdotes of Painting.’
Of his children a son, Philip, became a captain in the Welsh fusiliers, and fort major of the island of Jersey, and died in 1793, aged 54, and a daughter, Charlotte, practised as a painter, her ‘Four Ages’ being engraved by S. F. Ravenet, but taking to a vicious life, she ended miserably in the workhouse of St. James's, Westminster, on 21 Feb. 1762.
[Walpole's Anecd. of Painting, ed. Wornum; Vertue's MSS. (Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 23068–23076); Seguier's Dict. of Painters; Chaloner Smith's Brit. Mezzotinto Portraits; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists.]