Flora Mitchell

Flora Mitchell (1890 - 1973) was an American-born Irish artist, remembered in particular for her mid-20th-century paintings of old Dublin architecture that has since disappeared.

Life[]

Florina Hippisley Mitchell was born on 23 Dec 1890 in Omaha, Nebraska.^[1] After a Sioux Indian uprising around the turn of the century, her father moved the family to Ireland, where he went to work for the Jameson whiskey distillery. Flora studied art at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art.^[2]

She married William Jameson, a great-grandson of John Jameson, the founder of the distillery, in 1930. A sailor and yachtsman, he died in 1939. A few years later she moved to Killiney, where she lived and worked for the remainder of her life. She died on 13 April 1973.^[3]

Work[]

In 1955 Mitchell had a solo exhibition at the Dublin Painters' Gallery. She had another solo exhibition at the Upper Grosvenor Galleries in London in 1969.^[4]

Mitchell exhibited her work numerous times at the Royal Hibernian Academy, and at the Dublin Sketching Club in 1967, 1969, 1970, 1971, and 1972.^[4]

In her old age, Flora Mitchell produced hundreds of sketches of the streets and buildings of Dublin, many of which are now in the possession of the National Gallery of Ireland. Fifty finished ink and watercolour drawings were used to illustrate her book Vanishing Dublin (1966). The images represent a Dublin that no longer exists, as many of the buildings depicted have since been demolished.

Publications[]

• Vanishing Dublin, with an Introduction by the Earl of Wicklow. Published by Dublin: Allen & Figgis, 1966

See also[]

• List of Irish artists

References[]

External links[]

• images of Flora H. Mitchell's paintings at artNet