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Alexander Mitchell (1817-1887) was one of early Milwaukee's most prominent citizens. A banker, Mitchell founded the Marine Bank of Wisconsin. Mitchell also was long-time president of the Milwaukee Road. Milwaukee Public Library Archives & Special Collections hold the Archives of the Milwaukee Road, one of the most extensive and important collections of railroad history.
Mitchell was himself also an avid art collector, and the choice of Lydia Ely for this portrait reflects his good taste. Ely was an important nineteenth-century Wisconsin woman artist. She was instrumental in the construction of John Conway's "The Victorious Charge," Wisconsin's most important Civil War monument located in the Court of Honor across from the Central Library. The pairing here--Mitchell and Ely--is a fitting one; it was Mitchell who first proposed and financed the monument, but Ely who would help see it to completion, more than a decade after Mitchell's death. The Mitchell mansion was located next door to the Central Library building, at the site of what is now the Wisconsin Club.
Ely’s work is very rarely seen.
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