Charles Merlin | |
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 Portrait of Merlin from the Greek newspaper To Asty, 1887 | |
| Born | Charles Louis William Merlin 1821 |
| Died | (aged 75) Campden Hill, London |
| Occupation(s) | Diplomat, banker, antiquities trader |
| Known for | Procurement of antiquities for the British Museum |
| Spouse | Isabella Dorothea Green |
| Children | 6, of whom 3 survived to adulthood, including Sidney |
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Charles Louis William Merlin (1821 – 23 August 1896) was a British banker, diplomat and antiquities trader. He is known for his role in procuring objects, particularly Graeco-Roman antiquities, for the British Museum.
Born to a family of French aristocrats settled in London, Merlin joined the British consular service in Piraeus, the port of Athens, in 1836. He remained stationed in Greece for the next five decades, where he also worked for the British-owned Ionian Bank and rose to the rank of consul-general in 1886. From the early 1860s until his return to Britain in 1887, he corresponded closely with Charles Newton, the British Museum's Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities, who used Merlin as an intermediary to circumvent Greek laws against the export of ancient artefacts.
Merlin's sales to the British Museum totalled around 460 objects. These included the Aineta aryballos, whose export in 1864 launched a minor scandal in Greece, and casts of some of the Parthenon marbles still remaining in situ. He has been termed "among the most prolific, if not the most important, direct providers of antiquities" to the British Museum in the nineteenth century.[1]