{{Short description|Irish artist}} {{Use dmy dates|date=February 2022}} {{Use Hiberno-English|date=February 2022}} {{Infobox artist | name = Flora Mitchell | image = | imagesize = | caption = | birth_name = Florina Hippisley Mitchell | birth_date = {{Birth date text|1890}} | birth_place = Omaha, Nebraska | death_date = {{Death year and age|1973|1890}} | death_place = | nationality = | education = Dublin Metropolitan School of Art | field = Painting | training = | movement = | works = | patrons = | awards = | spouse = {{marriage|William Jameson|1930|1939}} }}
'''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.
==Early life and family== Florina Hippisley Mitchell was born on 23 December 1890 in Omaha, Nebraska.<ref name="FamousJamesons">{{cite web|title=Florina Hippisley Mitchell|url=http://www.famousjamesons.com/getperson.php?personID=I365&tree=Whiskey_Jamesons|website=Famous Jamesons|accessdate=8 December 2017}}</ref> Her parents were Margaret (née Hippisley?) and Arthur J. C. Mitchell. She was their eldest child. In Omaha, her father was the manager director of the Anglo-American Cattle Company. 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 at Smithfield.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |last=Minch |first=Rebecca |date=2009 |title=Mitchell, Flora Hippisley |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/mitchell-flora-hippisley-a9189 |access-date=2022-03-16 |website=Dictionary of Irish Biography}}</ref> Mitchell lived with relations in Drogheda before moving to Dublin.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Milligan |first=Kathyrn |title=Painting Dublin, 1886-1949 : visualising a changing city. |date=2021 |publisher=Manchester University Press |isbn=978-1-5261-6118-5 |location= |pages=181–189 |oclc=1241730606}}</ref> Mitchell attended Princess Helena College, Ealing, London, from 1906 to 1908, where she won a number of art prizes. Between 1905 and 1906, 1908 and 1909, and 1910 and 1911, Mitchell studied art at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (DMSA).<ref name=":1" /><ref>Obituary, ''Irish Times'', 23 April 1973</ref> During World War I, Mitchell was a volunteer, and during the 1916 Easter Rising her family supported the British Army.<ref name=":0" />
She married William George Jameson (born 1851), a great-grandson of John Jameson, the founder of the distillery, in 1930. They lived at St Marnock's, County Dublin.<ref name=":0" /> 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 at her home, Alloa. She died at her home on 13 April 1973.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Dictionary of Irish Artists 20th Century Second Edition|last=Snoddy|first=Theo|publisher=Merlin Publishing|year=2002|isbn=1-903582-17-2|location=Dublin|pages=428}}</ref>
==Artistic career== While still at the DMSA, Mitchell developed an interest in pencil and ink drawings of topographical, urban, and architectural drawings, exhibiting with the Dublin Sketching Club in 1912 to 1914 with views of Dublin landmarks including the O'Connell Monument and the Shelbourne Hotel.<ref name=":1" /> Mitchell moved to Canada to take up a post as a private teacher in 1919, but returned to Dublin by the late 1920s.<ref name=":0" /> She contributed to the 1927 ''Dublin Civic Week Handbook'' and 1929 ''A book of Dublin.''<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" />
In 1955, Mitchell had a solo exhibition at the Dublin Painters' Gallery, St Stephen's Green. She had another solo exhibition at the Upper Grosvenor Galleries in London in 1969.<ref name="Exhibitions">{{cite web|title=Mitchell, Flora - Exhibitions|url=http://www.nival.ie/collections/artists-database/view/artist-exhibitions/name/mitchell-flora/|website=National Irish Visual Arts Library|publisher=National College of Art & Design|accessdate=8 December 2017}}</ref> Mitchell exhibited her work at the Royal Hibernian Academy annually from 1957 to 1970,<ref name=":0" /> and at the Dublin Sketching Club in 1967, 1969, 1970, 1971, and 1972.<ref name="Exhibitions"/>
In later life, 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 (NGI).
===Vanishing Dublin=== 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, which was her motivation for recording these streets and buildings.<ref name=":1" /> The book is a valuable collector's item as the original plates were destroyed after the book was published, and many of the books have now been split up with their pages sold separately as prints. Her work has been placed within the tradition of recording the streetscapes of Dublin, beginning with James Malton's Views of Dublin, and was compared with paintings by her contemporary, Harry Kernoff.<ref name=":0" />
The National Gallery of Ireland held an exhibition of her work, "Flora Mitchell, views of Dublin", in 1999.<ref name=":0" />
==Publications== * ''Vanishing Dublin'', with an Introduction by the Earl of Wicklow. Published by Dublin: Allen & Figgis, 1966 <!-- Commented out: thumbnail|Vanishing Dublin book cover -->
==See also== * List of Irish artists
==References== {{Reflist}}
== External links == {{Commons category}} * [http://www.artnet.com/artists/flora-h-mitchell/3 images of Flora H. Mitchell's paintings] at artNet
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mitchell, Flora}} Category:1890 births Category:1973 deaths Category:20th-century Irish painters Category:Artists from Omaha, Nebraska Category:Alumni of the National College of Art and Design Category:American emigrants to Ireland Category:20th-century American women artists Category:Burials at St. Andrew's Church, Graveyard, Malahide Category:Artists from County Dublin Category:20th-century Irish women painters