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.

Flora Mitchell
Born
Florina Hippisley Mitchell

1890 (1890)
Omaha, Nebraska
Died1973 (aged 82–83)
EducationDublin Metropolitan School of Art
Known forPainting
Spouse(s)
William Jameson
​
​
(m. 1930⁠–⁠1939)​

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

References
  1. "Florina Hippisley Mitchell". Famous Jamesons. Retrieved 8 December 2017.
  2. Obituary, Irish Times, 23 April 1973
  3. Snoddy, Theo (2002). Dictionary of Irish Artists 20th Century Second Edition. Dublin: Merlin Publishing. p. 428. ISBN 1-903582-17-2.
  4. "Mitchell, Flora - Exhibitions". National Irish Visual Arts Library. National College of Art & Design. Retrieved 8 December 2017.
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