The Old Book by Miss Jean Mitchell. Source: Picture Sheffield.
Jean Mitchell became an established portrait painter and was a member of the Sheffield Society of Artists, regularly showing her paintings in local exhibitions.
She was the daughter of Young Mitchell, artist and headmaster of the Sheffield School of Art, and his wife Mary Elizabeth, née Smith. Her father died when she was young, and she and her siblings were brought up by their widowed mother. Two of Jean’s sisters, Jessie and Florence, continued to live with their mother until her death in February 1904. Later in 1904 Jean Mitchell married Frank Saltfleet, another well-known Sheffield artist.
Mrs J.M. Saltfleet, another of Sheffield’s most notable portrait painters, is the contributor of six clever works to the oil colour section. Mrs. Saltfleet may always be relied upon for thoroughly competent and discriminating work, in which the fine accuracy which characterised the teaching of one of her masters – the great Frenchman who taught at Juliens when he was not painting works for the Salon, Bouguereau, – is always, along with an unerring discrimination in the use of colour, the distinguishing mark of her works.
Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 18 November 1927
In 1930 Jean Saltfleet and her husband Frank put on a combined exhibition of 100 examples of their work at the Sheffield Society of Artists’ Gallery at 65 Surrey Street. The exhibition reflected the versatility of Jean Saltfleet’s work, portraits in oils, water-colours, pastel, and chalk as well as flower painting.
Jean Saltfleet died, aged 80, in May 1941 and was buried in the Anglican area of the Cemetery in plot H 107.
You can read more about the artists in the Cemetery in the Sheffield General Cemetery Trust’s publication Canvas of Memories and follow the self-guided trail Artists of the Sheffield General Cemetery.