Description

Extended Data

DAAO URL

https://www.daao.org.au/bio/mitty-lee-brown

Birth Place

San Francisco, CA, USA

Biography

painter and printmaker, was born in San Francisco (USA), a fifth-generation Australian who came to Sydney as a young child with her parents. She went to school at Ascham in Sydney and at Westonbirt, England. Her mother, Ailsa Lee Brown , was an artist, and Mitty also studied art: at East Sydney Technical College under Frank Medworth and William Dobell in 1944-46. While still a student, she took up residence at Merioola in Woollahra, a boarding house run by Chica Lowe who actively sought tenants with an interest in all fields of artistic expression. In 1944 Mitty Lee Brown was runner-up to Anne Wienholt , another Merioola resident, for the NSW Travelling Art Scholarship. In 1945 three pages of Present Day Art in Australia were devoted to her work; the paintings reproduced included a self-portrait, Sulky Girl . Mitty Lee Brown left Australia with Wienholt in 1945, travelled extensively and did not return to Sydney until 1962, then but briefly. This inveterate traveller has lived in Paris and near Bordeaux in France, in Rome and, briefly, in Tokyo. She has built a house in Bali near Donald Friend’s longtime residence, lived on a houseboat in Kashmir, India, and renovated a house on the Greek Island of Cos. She has also undertaken two overland journeys from Europe to Australia via Turkey, Afghanistan and India. From 1980 until her death in June 2012, as Mrs Risi, she lived and worked near Trincomalee, Sri Lanka, but maintained regular visits to Australia. Writers: Simmons, Paul Joanna Mendelssohn Date written: 1995 Last updated: 2012

Born

b. 1921

Summary

Lee Brown a painter and printmaker, doyenne of the Charm School. Born in San Francisco was runner up in NSW Travelling Art Scholarship, 1944. Left Australia in 1945 to travel extensively around the world. She spent her final years in Sri Lanka.

Gender

Female

Died

3-Jun-12

Age at death

91