Lucy Myers Wright Mitchell

American archaeologist, historian, and missionary (1845–1888)

Archaeologist
historian
missionary

Academic backgroundAlma materMount Holyoke College (left 1864, no degree)InfluencesJohannes OverbeckAcademic workInstitutionsArt Institute of Chicago
Imperial German Archaeological InstituteNotable worksA History of Ancient Sculpture (1883)

Lucy Myers Wright Mitchell (née Lucy Myers Wright; March 20, 1845 – March 10, 1888) was an American classical archaeologist, historian, and missionary who studied ancient art. Mitchell was the first American to publish a book on classical sculpture^[1] and was one of the first women to study the field of classical archaeology.^[2]

Biography

Mitchell was born on March 20, 1845, in Urumiah, Persia. Her parents were missionaries of the Nestorian Christians in Persia (now called the Assyrian Church of the East in Iran), Catherine Myers Wright^[1] and Austin Hazen Wright, a Dartmouth College alumnus.^[3] She is the sister of classical scholar John Henry Wright. Mitchell attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College) and left in 1864 with no degree when she was chosen to accompany her father on his return to his mission in Persia. After his death in 1865, she left missionary life.^[1] She married Samuel S. Mitchell, who studied language and art, in 1867, and they would live in Lebanon and Germany before returning to Massachusetts.^[2] Her two-volume, 766 page work, A History of Ancient Sculpture, begins with its origins in Ancient Egypt in the first volume, and includes Selections of Ancient Sculpture, a second volume of plates.^[4] Classical archaeologist Stephen L. Dyson calls Mitchell's work "the first general American text on ancient art".^[5]

Bibliography

A History of Ancient Sculpture (1883) Download. View
Selections of Ancient Sculpture (1883)

References

^ ^a ^b ^c Dyson, Stephen L. "Lucy Wright Mitchell, 1845-1888" (PDF). Brown University. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-06-17.
^ ^a ^b Dyson, Stephen. "Lucy Wright Mitchell". Breaking Ground: Women in Old World Archaeology. Brown University. Retrieved December 25, 2021.
^ "Lucy Myers Wright Mitchell | American archaeologist and missionary | Britannica". www.britannica.com. 2022-03-16 [first published 1999-07-01]. Archived from the original on 2022-07-08. Retrieved 2022-12-31.
^ "Ancient Sculpture" (PDF), The New York Times, pp. BR431, 1905-07-01.
^ Dyson, Stephen L. (1998). Ancient Marbles to American Shores: Classical Archaeology in the United States. University of Pennsylvania Press, p. 106. ISBN 0-8122-3446-4.

External links

Collection: Wright Family papers, Dartmouth Library Archives & Manuscripts.
Teng, Wen Li. (2020). "Grant Park and the Globe: Lucy Mitchell, Bessie Bennett, and the Art Institute of Chicago." The Virginia Tech Undergraduate Historical Review. 9: pp. 17–27. doi:10.21061/vtuhr.v9i0.3