La Jolla Cove

Alfred R. Mitchell, 1888–1972

After receiving his initial artistic education in San Diego under Maurice Braun, Alfred Mitchell studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and traveled in Europe before returning to California. He would later serve as President of the San Diego Art Guild and was among those who signed the incorporation papers for the Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego, which today is known as The San Diego Museum of Art.

Like many of his contemporary artists in Southern California, Mitchell combined in his work the lessons both of Thomas Eakins’s American Realism and of French art; the resulting plein air style has come to be known as California Impressionism. Visitors to The San Diego Museum of Art will find on display a group of California Impressionist paintings that includes Mitchell’s work alongside that of such artists as Maurice Braun, Nicolai Fechin, Charles Fries, Charles Reiffel, Guy Rose, and Elliott Torrey.

View a discussion on La Jolla Cove by Dr. Amy Galpin, Associate Curator, Art of the Americas.