Lot Essay
The inscription identifying the sitter would appear to have been added later. Two other drawings identified as showing 'Mrs Mercier' or 'Mrs Mercier and her youngest son Henry' are in the Royal Collection, but Oppé says that the two women are different (A.P. Oppé, The Drawings of Paul and Thomas Sandby in the Collection of His Majesty the King at Windsor Castle, 1947, p.65, no.257 and p.66, no.266). He also denies that they could be related to the painter Philip Mercier (?1689-1760) who married, as his second wife, Dorothy Clapham in 1735; she, their daughter Charlotte and a Philip Mercier who was perhaps their son, were all artists. According to Oppé, Charlotte would have been too old for a drawing dateable to the 1750s. However, it is tempting to associate this Watteauesque drawing in black and red chalk with the artist, Philip Mercier, who did so much to introduce Watteau's style into England.