Frederick Mercer RBSA Charcoal Pit at Boppart after Prout

An original late 19th-century watercolour painting, Frederick Mercer RBSA, Charcoal Pit at Boppart after Prout.

A particularly fine copy in miniature after Samuel Prout by Frederick Mercer RBSA (1850–1939). The subject, from Prout's series of Illustrations of the Rhine, shows workers at a charcoal pit at the German town of Boppard in the Rhine Gorge.

Frederick Mercer RBSA (1850–1939) was born in Birmingham. His father was a fishmonger and Frederick started work as an errand boy at the age of ten. By the age of twenty he was employed as a photographer, before going on to become a professional watercolourist. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists between 1871 and 1911, some 116 works in all. In 1888 he was elected an Associate of the RBSA and full member in 1922. He exhibited six watercolours at Suffolk Street and four works at the New Watercolour Society.