Mitchell, Lucy Myers Wright

Lucy Myers Wright Mitchell, née Lucy Myers Wright, (born March 20, 1845, Orumiyeh, Persia (now Iran)—died March 10, 1888, Lausanne, Switz.), archaeologist who, though self-taught, became an internationally recognized authority on ancient Greek and Roman sculpture.

Lucy Wright was the daughter of a missionary to the Nestorian Christians in Persia. In 1860 she was taken to the United States, and a short time later she entered Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College), South Hadley, Massachusetts, leaving in 1864 to rejoin her father in Persia. On his death the next year she returned to the United States. She married Samuel S. Mitchell in 1867, and they traveled together as missionaries to Syria. Her husband’s health failed soon afterward, however, and they left Syria; the rest of Lucy Mitchell’s life was spent mainly in Europe. By that time she had acquired a vernacular knowledge of Syriac and Arabic, as well as French, German, and Italian, and for a time she devoted herself to philological studies. Her dictionary of modern Syriac was never published, and the manuscript was ultimately obtained by the University of Cambridge.

In 1873 Mitchell turned her attention to ancient art. While living in Rome (1876–78) she gave parlour lectures on Greek and Roman sculpture. A number of museums and libraries granted her scholar’s privileges, and many leading archaeologists of Europe assisted her in her studies. In 1883 she published A History of Ancient Sculpture and a companion volume of plates, Selections from Ancient Sculpture. These works were well received by critics and fellow scholars, and in 1884 she became only the second woman to be elected to the Imperial German Archaeological Institute. From 1884 to 1886 she studied in Berlin for a major work on Greek pottery and vase painting. Mitchell fell ill, however, and died before completing her studies.