A Portrait of a Young Boy
Oil on Canvas
22 x 17 inches (55.9 x 43.2 cms)

Philip Mercier was an important painter of great ability who was one of the first in England to adopt, if not plunder, the work of Watteau (from 1720) to produce the conversation piece (in 1725) and to coin the domestic ’fancy’ picture (from 1737). Such innovations are in themselves enough to commend the artist to our attention.

His personality and art were compounded of a number of foreign influences: he was born in Berlin of French Huguenot parents, studied in Berlin and Paris, and had probably worked in Hanover before settling in London sometime before 1720. Since nothing is known of his activity before he came to London, he is generally accepted as an English artist whose pleasant and often surprising work resulted from a naturally French inclination being modified by an English environment.

His style developed through clearly defined stages, the engravings and pastiches of Watteau, the conversation piece, which was virtually an Anglicisation of the Féte Galante, the court painter portraits and other commissions for Frederick, Prince of Wales, the first of the Hanoverians to declare a taste in the arts and finally the fancy pictures and portraits produced in some quantity for provincial patrons.

Stylistically the development was gradual from the delicate rococo-fantasy of Watteau towards a more substantial, middle class interpretation of Chardin. In London Mercier began by competing with Scotin and Ravenet and ended by contending with Hudson
In 1720 Mercier''s arrival in London could have been expected on at least three counts. He was a Huguenot, an initiate of the Court at Hanover, and informed on French taste. In the parish of St Anne''s, Soho, where he first settled, three-fifths of the population were French, many of them fine craftsmen, particularly in the silk weaving trade. This district of London was then known as the French Quarter. The House of Hanover had occupied the English throne since 1714 in the person of George I, a German speaking democratic monarch of little taste but of a stable, unimaginative character. In 1727 George II, who could boast some English, succeeded; one of his few known comments was ''I hate bainting and boetry both''. Though an artist from Hanover was, therefore, politically welcome, he need not have expected thereby much patronage, indeed Huguenot loyalties might have proved much more useful. After the Treaty of Utrecht had concluded the wars of the Spanish Succession in 1713, French ideas and fashions came increasingly into this country, to cease only with the political unrest which led to the Seven Years War in 1756. Though it never took fundamental roots, this French influence centred ultimately on Watteau, and the growth of French taste - the subject of the 1968 Kenwood exhibition - were considerable spurs to English artists at a time when they were struggling to assert themselves.

Museums where examples of the artist''s work can be found include: Edinburgh, London (National Gallery) and Paris (Louvre)