William Frederick Mitchell

{{Short description|English painter}}

{{Other people|Fred Mitchell}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2023}}

{{Use British English|date=September 2012}}

File:HMS Victoria 121 guns.jpg of {{HMS|Victoria|1859|6}}]]

William Frederick Mitchell (Calshot, 1845–1914, Ryde, Isle of Wight) was a British artist commissioned to paint many naval and merchant ships.

Mitchell's collected works were originally published in The Royal Navy in a series of illustrations. Many are in the National Maritime Museum Collection in Greenwich, England. Mitchell lived most of his life near Portsmouth and painted pictures of Royal Navy and merchant ships for their officers and owners. He also illustrated Brassey's Naval Annual. Mitchell's works are numbered and run to more than 3,500. His medium was principally watercolour but he painted some oils as well.

Mitchell wrote a short autobiography for the 1904 May/June issue of The Messenger, a magazine for deaf people, in which he describes how scarlet fever deprived him of his hearing but at home his father, an HM Coastguard stationed at Calshot Castle, taught him to speak. The autobiography relates his move to Ryde on the Isle of Wight, shortly after marriage to Miss Woodman in 1881. It also claims Queen Victoria, Edward, Prince of Wales, the German Emperor,{{clarify|date=April 2013}} and the Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich of Russia among Mitchell's patrons.{{cite web |url= http://www.warart.zoomshare.com/album/art%20forsale/images/7c748d601eea9ae45c905feca0e691bc_12597787580/:album |title=HMS Hermes 1910 |work=Art for sale |author=War Art |publisher=Zoomshare |access-date=23 April 2013}}{{cite book |editor-last=Wood |editor-first=Christopher |year=1978 |title=The Dictionary of Victorian Painters |publisher=Antique Collectors' Club Ltd |isbn=978-0-902028-72-2 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofvict00wood }}{{cite book |last=Mallalieu |first=H.L. |year=1986 |title=The Dictionary of British Watercolour Artists up to 1920 |publisher=Antique Collectors' Club Ltd |isbn=1-85149-036-1}}{{cite journal |date=May–June 1904 |journal=The Messenger }}