Alfred R. Mitchell

Alfred R. Mitchell

Alfred R. Mitchell

Alfred R. Mitchell

Alfred R. Mitchell (1888-1972) 

Early San Diego Plein Air Painter

Many outstanding and celebrated artists called the San Diego area home during the heyday of California impressionism. Among them, Maurice Braun, Alfred Mitchell, Charles Fries, Charles Reiffel, Edith White, George Spangenberg, Leonard Lester, Ernest Pohl, and Leon Bonnet.

Alfred Mitchell's stature as one of our country's finest plein air artists has grown over time. His San Diego mentor was Maurice Braun and it was under Braun's tutelage that Mitchell decided to attend the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts to further his studies. His teachers included Garber, Hale and Breckenridge and while in Pennsylvania, he developed a lasting relationship with Edward Redfield, one of America's greatest landscape artists.  He was in love with painting and his work conveys this.  He attended classes variously from 1916-1920 and painted in the New Hope area well into the 1920s. His work not only reflects these teachers' brilliance, but also their discipline.

His remarkable palette of rich colors have stood up against the ravages of time and weather (most Mitchell paintings are in excellent condition). This can be attributed to his fastidious special preparation of linseed oil and paint which he would boil, store in clear jars and allow to be bleached by the sun. When compared with the paint of many other American artists one can see the difference. Mitchell's paint is richer and more sensuous. He sought bright colors to capture the local landscape. In a letter to his brother he states, "If you are interested in capturing the sunlight, you will find brilliant colors and strong contrasts a big help. It is simple enough to make quiet colors by toning them down, but you can't make them brilliant unless you have brilliant colors on your palette."  Much of his early work exhibits this "brilliance" of color, though he was capable of conveying varying degrees of tonality. Redfield's influence can be seen in his glowing creations of brilliant snow covered landscapes and Garber in his atmospheric paintings of fog and overcast days.

He painted the scenes of San Diego en plein air and thus his paintings give us a glimpse of southern California as it really was. Mitchell would paint 8" x 10" and 16" x 20" masonite boards on location (the 8 x 10s being a 16 x 20 panel cut into fourths). Many of his larger paintings (almost invariably on canvas) were produced in his studio, though he would on occasion paint a larger canvas outdoors.

Mitchell's career encompassed different styles and periods of style development. His paintings run from realism to impressionism with many of his works taking on a more regionalist flavor especially from the late 1940s into the 1950s. He would apply these different approaches to what he felt would best convey his feelings of the scene and thus his painting style cannot be attributed accurately to specific time periods.

Mitchell taught privately for many years, influencing a whole generation of San Diego artists with his traditional values of composition and draftsmanship.