EQUESTRIAN PORTRAIT OF LADY MERCY GREVILLE.
Image: www.christies.com.
Lady Mercy Greville (aged 15 or 16), daughter of socialist and social reformer Frances Evelyn Greville, 5th Countess of Warwick.
- Media: oil on canvas.
- Dimensions: 1.575 x 2.363 m (3.72 m²).
- History: “signed and dated ‘Annie L. Swynnerton 1920’ (lower right)”; comissioned by the Countess of Warwick (Birmingham Daily Gazette, 13 Jul 1920, p4), “her youngest child, Mercy Greville”; exhibited Manchester 1923, “Paintings by Mrs Swynnerton / no. 40.”; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, Sixtieth Autumn Exhibition, 1934; auctioned Christie’s, 8 Nov 1968, “Anonymous sale”; auctioned Christie’s, London, 18 Dec 2012, “PETER LANGAN [restauranteur and patron of the arts]: A LIFE WITH ART”, “Lady Mercy Marter (née Greville) (1904-1968) was the daughter of society beauty and socialist Frances Evelyn Greville, 5th Countess of Warwick. She was formerly wife of Basil Dean and Patrick Gamble and wife of Richard Marter,” sold.
- Location: unknown.
* The painting is titled Equestrian Portrait of Lady Mercy Marter in the Christie’s sale, but as the sitter did not marry into the Marter family until 1936, Greville is more appropriate and would have been the name used in the 1923 exhibition. (Thanks to G. W. for this observation.)
SKETCH FOR EQUESTRIAN PORTRAIT OF LADY MERCY GREVILLE.
Images: Royal Academy Illustrated, 1927.
- Media: oil on canvas.
- Dimensions: ?
- History: shown in The Royal Academy Illustrated, 1927, and The Times, 2 May 1927; reproduced in Susan Thomson (2018) The Life and Works of Annie Louisa Swynnerton. Warrington: Manchester Art Press; Tate.
- Location: Tate Britain.
Thanks to Grant Waters for the Royal Academy Illustrated images.
ANNIE LOUISA SWYNNERTON (1844-1933) 
Mercy was my godmother and even more beautiful than your image. Red hair, green eyes, delicate pale skin.
She was very well-known in London’s West End and we got on very well and she was able to smuggle me into bars, much to my mother’s horror. Mercy drank whisky … I drank lemonade. And we talked a lot … I don’t remember any other details.
Late in life she married Dick Marter and they bought a small house in rural Wales where my mother and I once visited. Unfortunately her heavy drinking incurred a fall down the stairs of her house which caused her death.
Aeons later (I am in my 90’s) I still miss her. She had joie-de-vivre and an incomparable sense of fun.
Dec 7 2021.
Quite some time after she had decided that her child-bearing days were over, Daisy [Mercy’s mother, Countess of Warwick] was informed during a routine doctor’s visit that she was pregnant. “Mercy!” she exclaimed, and indeed it was. (I think it’s true, but even if it’s a fiction, it’s a good one …)
Dec 8 2021 (extract from private correspondence).
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