Gallant scene, attributed to Philippe Mercier (1689-1760 School of Antoine Watteau.

Philippe Mercier (1689-1760) attributed. School of Antoine Watteau. Gallant scene.

Relined canvas measuring 81 cm by 54 cm.
Frame measuring 97 cm by 70 cm.

In a very beautiful frame, the artist offers us a gallant scene. During a game of Blind Man's Buff, a young man declares his love to a young lady, a Cupid encourages him in this direction. On the right, another young woman with a small dog at her feet seeking her attention. In the background, a very beautiful landscape delicately created in a soft blue atmosphere. Our painting is attributed to Philippe Mercier who, without being a student of Antoine Watteau (he didn't really have any), painted many paintings in the style of Watteau (there are many painters who did it, including Nicolas Lancret, Jean-Baptiste Pater, Pierre Antoine Quillard, Michel Barthélémy Ollivier, Bonaventure de Bar, etc.). Alongside his paintings according to Watteau, he also painted scenes more in the taste of English painting, particularly in the way of painting faces.

Philippe Mercier (1689-1760)

Philippe Mercier can hardly be considered a French painter. Born in Berlin into a family of French Huguenots, he trained there with Antoine Pesne, who, French by birth, himself spent almost his entire career in Germany. He made a trip to Italy, probably passed through France and settled in London around 1716 and spent the rest of his life there. It is said that he met Watteau during the latter's stay in the English capital, around 1720. In any case, Watteau's influence was decisive for Mercier; he became his successor, without having been strictly speaking his pupil, and some of Mercier's works could be considered Watteau works: witness The Conjuring Man in the Louvre, which comes from the La Caze collection, where he bore an attribution to Watteau. In fact, whether in his portraits or in his genre scenes, Mercier accentuates the puppet-like character of Watteau's characters and his art is not unrelated to that of Pietro Longhi, if not even Hogarth in its somewhat caricatured side. Mercier is poorly represented in French museums; It is in London that one must go to study it, at the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. His first "conversation pieces", or group portraits, so appreciated by British amateurs, date from 1725-26. He then achieved rapid success and became in 1729 "Principal Painter to the Prince of Wales", Frederick, one of the propagators of Rococo in England. He then worked for the royal family (The Prince of Wales and his Sisters, 1733, London, NPG) but lost the favor of the Court in 1736. He then settled in York (1739-1751) and survived without difficulty thanks to his portraits (The Burton Family or Interior Scene at the Squirrel, Paris, Louvre) and his gallant, rural or familiar scenes (The Five Senses, United States, Mellon collection; The Music Session, London, Tate Gal.; The Seamstress, id.; The Young Taster, Paris, Louvre). His works show a direct influence from Watteau (The Conjurer, Paris, Louvre). But they retain a very British character. After a short stay in Portugal (1752), Mercier returned to live in London. He is representative of the many Franco-English artistic contacts in the first half of the 18th century.