Charlotte Mercier (1738–1762) was a French painter and printmaker active in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

. Mercier, born in London, was the daughter of the artist Philippe Mercier, with whom she studied; a 1738 record of her baptism records her parents' names as Philip and Dorothy. She is said to have turned to a dissolute life after some early success as an artist. An appeal from her mother was read to the Society of Artists in 1761, but she nevertheless died in the

St James Workhouse The St James Workhouse opened in 1725 on Poland Street in the Soho area of London, England, in what was then the parish of Westminster St James, and continued well into the nineteenth century. Higginbotham conjectured that the infirmary at St J ...

Westminster Westminster is the main settlement of the City of Westminster in Central London, Central London, England. It extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street and has many famous landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, Buckingham Palace, ...

the following year.Profile of Claude Mercier
in the ''Dictionary of Pastellists Before 1800''. Two portraits, of ''Madeleine Marie Agathe Renée de la Bigotière de Perchambault'' and of ''Olivier-Joseph Le Gonidec'', are in the collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts; both are pastels, and are dated 1757. A

mezzotint Mezzotint is a monochrome printmaking process of the intaglio (printmaking), intaglio family. It was the first printing process that yielded half-tones without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple. Mezzo ...

after her father, ''Miss Playing with Cup and Ball'', is owned by the

National Portrait Gallery, London The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London that houses a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. When it opened in 1856, it was arguably the first national public gallery in the world th ...

, which also owns a mezzotint portrait of her, after another of her father's works, by James Macardell, published in 1756. Mercier is sometimes confused with the artist Claude Mercier, also active as a pastellist.

References

1738 births 1762 deaths 18th-century English painters 18th-century English women artists 18th-century French engravers 18th-century French painters 18th-century English engravers English pastel artists English women painters French pastel artists French women printmakers Painters from London French women engravers French women pastel artists 18th-century French women painters {{Engraver-stub