Flora Mitchell was a passionate recorder of vanishing city architecture, writes Hilary Pyle
When Flora Mitchell first exhibited in Dublin, few people knew where she came from. She wasn’t Irish, despite her dedication to painting views of Ireland’s historic capital. One thought was that her origins were in Australia, another South Africa, but in reality she was born in the midwestern states of America in 1890, at Omaha, on the Missouri River, the largest city in Nebraska. Her father, Arthur Mitchell, who was managing director of the Anglo-American Cattle Company, came from Devon, descended from the eminent Anglo-Saxon family the Hippisleys, important since before the 10th century. The artist thus began life as Florina Hippisley Mitchell, her first name suggesting that her parents had fond memories of the Macedonian town ‘where Greece begins’. She was always known as Flora, though, and signed her works ‘Flora H. Mitchell’.
The Glucksman Library at the University of Limerick is now one of the most digitally advanced libraries in the world, writes Judith Hill
