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
She was born in Omaha, Nebraska. 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.[1]
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.
Work
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
- ↑ Obituary, Irish Times, 23 April 1973