A watercolour drawing of a seated female figure in an interior, holding an infant in her lap. The sheet is circumscribed with a black line and is inscribed below on the modern mount, 'Mrs Mercier and her son', probably copied from an earlier one.

Although Paul Sandby met the French painter Philippe Mercier (1689-1760) in London in the early 1750s, the drawing is unlikely to show Mercier's wife, Dorothy, who was awarded a living by the Society of Artists after his death in 1760. A. P. Oppé contests the identification of this drawing and another in the Royal Collection (RCIN 914384) as Dorothy Mercier on the grounds that she would have been too old at this date; Mercier and his wife are also only known to have had one daughter. Many of the inscriptions on Sandby's drawings are inaccurate or mistranscribed from other sheets. In this case, Sandby made several drawings of a Mrs Mercier and her son and it seems likely that she is another person of the same name.