Wingfield, Mervyn Edward (1836–1904), 7th Viscount Powerscourt , landowner, politician, and connoisseur, was born 13 October 1836 at Powerscourt Castle, near Enniskerry, Co. Wicklow, the eldest of the three sons of Richard Wingfield (1815–44), sixth viscount, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Frances Charlotte Jocelyn (1813–84), eldest daughter of Robert Jocelyn (qv), third earl of Roden. His father, who was liberal MP for Bath, had begun improvements to the family estate of Powerscourt but died of consumption in 1844. Mervyn's guardians were his maternal grandfather Roden and his great-uncle William Wingfield (1799–1880), vicar of Abbeyleix. His brother was the writer and painter Lewis Strange Wingfield (qv). In 1846 his mother married the 4th marquess of Londonderry, Frederick W. R. Stewart (1805–72). After being educated at Eton, Mervyn was commissioned in the 1st life guards (1854–62) and assumed management of the family estate in 1857 when he reached his twenty-first birthday.
Believing that the estate had declined during his minority, he took advantage of rising agricultural prices to raise rents, but still managed to maintain the family tradition of being on good terms with his tenants. He spent the next twenty years improving Powerscourt house and demesne (originally built between 1731 and 1740 to a design by Richard Castle (qv)), until the agricultural depression of the 1880s forced him to cut back on expenditure. He travelled widely on the Continent collecting works of art and antiques of all kinds, including rare suits of armour and old weapons, which he used to furnish Powerscourt house. An enthusiastic hunter, he also built up a spectacular collection of stags’ heads, many of which he shot himself, and added to this collection the heads of elephants he shot in India in 1860–61. He assembled one of the finest art collections in Ireland, including works by Fra Filipo Lippi, Bassano, Dürer, Cuyp, Brueghel, and Tintoretto.
Wingfield also developed the demesne's beautiful gardens, originally designed by Daniel Robertson in 1842, visiting gardens in Versailles, Vienna, and Mannheim to find inspiration. He and his gardener, Alexander Robertson, were responsible for the eventual design, completed in 1880, which Wingfield regarded as perhaps his greatest achievement. He added to the family holdings by purchasing the Beresford estate and Luggala, and by 1883 the Powerscourt estate earned a rental income of £16,385 a year and amounted to 53,258 acres: 40,986 in Co. Wicklow, 11,641 acres in Co. Wexford, and 631 in Co. Dublin, although most of these lands were later sold under the land acts. Wingfield recounted his family history and described his estate improvements and art and antique collections in the lavishly illustrated A description and history of Powerscourt (1903).
Wingfield's expertise as an art collector led to his being appointed one of the governors of the NGI in 1864, and he often accompanied the gallery's director George Mulvany (qv) on purchasing trips abroad. He was elected MRIA (1875). In the 1880s he was appointed chairman of the committee to select the architect to design the new National Library of Ireland and the National Museum.
In 1865 he was elected as a representative peer for Ireland, and supported the liberals. He was one of the few peers who voted in favour of the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869, a move that brought him into conflict with his grandfather, Roden. When Gladstone visited Ireland in 1877 he was a guest at Powerscourt house. However, Wingfield strongly opposed Gladstone's conversion to home rule, and sided with the liberal unionists from 1886. He favoured ameliorative measures for Ireland within the union, such as the establishment of a separate catholic university. Created Baron Powerscourt in the UK peerage (1885), he was also a knight of the order of St Patrick, and a member of the Irish privy council (1897–1904). Having served on the RDS council for many years, he was elected president (1892–7). In April 1899 he was elected to Wicklow county council for the Powerscourt division, and in 1902 was appointed a lord justice of Ireland.
Wingfield married Lady Julia Coke, eldest daughter of Thomas William Coke, second earl of Leicester, on 26 April 1864, and they had five children, two boys and three girls. He died 5 June 1904 in London, and was succeeded by his son Mervyn Richard Wingfield (1880–1947), 8th viscount , who was born 16 July 1880 at Brook St., London and baptised 12 September 1880 at Powerscourt. A liberal unionist like his father, he took a keen interest in politics and public life. He was a member of the Royal Victorian order (1902), comptroller of the household to the lord lieutenant of Ireland (1906–7), and a knight of the order of St Patrick (1910); he also served as deputy lieutenant for Co. Wicklow (1910) and JP for Co. Dublin. After John Redmond (qv) declared his support for the war effort, Wingfield argued that the gentry should take the lead in organising local National Volunteer companies and that they should be trained and equipped by the government. During the first world war he served in the Irish guards as a special reserve captain and was appointed assistant provost marshal (1916) and won the Belgian Croix de Guerre, KP, and MVO. His brother Maurice Anthony Wingfield (1883–1956) also served with distinction, winning the DSO (1916) and CMG (1918), and was promoted colonel of the rifle brigade (1922).
Like many southern unionists, the 8th viscount was shaken by the Easter rebellion of 1916, and produced a memorandum which criticised the upper classes in Ireland for failing to engage with Irish nationalism, which he believed had allowed the nationalist movement to fall into the hands of extremists. He argued that the rebellion provided an opportunity for all Irishmen to find common ground and seek a peaceful way of resolving their differences. He was one of 15 peers nominated to the new senate created by the Government of Ireland Act (1920), although it met only three times before its dissolution in 1922. Adopting a conciliatory attitude towards nationalism, he was one of a number of Irish peers who attended a meeting on 19 January 1922 at the Engineers’ Hall, Dawson St, Dublin, which advocated full cooperation with the newly established provisional government to advance the welfare of the country. He played an active public role in the new state, in such positions as chief commissioner of boy scouts for the Irish Free State and chairman of the committee that organised the Irish Sweepstakes in 1930. In December 1932 he was elected president of the RDS.
He married (1903) Sybil (1878–1946), eldest daughter of Major Walter Pleydell-Bouverie; they had a daughter and two sons. Mervyn Richard died 21 March 1947 at Powerscourt and was succeeded as 9th viscount by his son Mervyn Patrick Wingfield (1905–73), who in turn was succeeded as 10th viscount by Mervyn Niall Wingfield (b. 1935). The Powerscourt papers are held in the NLI.