Anna Katrina Zinkeisen (British painter and artist) 1901 - 1976
Anna Zinkeisen, younger sister of Doris, was born in Kilgreggan, Dunbartonshire. After attending Harrow School of Art, Anna won a scholarship to the Royal Academy, where Sir William Orpen (1878-1931) and Sir George Clausen (1852-1944) were then teaching. Orpen recommended that she transfer to the Sculpture School, which led to her designing bas-relief plaques for Wedgwood; she was the first person since John Flaxman in 1775 to provide original Wedgwood designs. Anna's three plaques won her a silver medal at the Paris Exhibition of Decorative Arts in 1925 - in 1921 she had won the Landseer Award of £40 for two years: 'You can't cast aside your great ambitions and your dreams of pure art because you work in an economic and competitive commercial world as well. The idea that the two are incompatible is all wrong.'(Quoted in J. Walpole, 'Anna' A Memorial Tribute to Anna Zinkeisen, 1978.) Anna later specialised in pathological and clinical drawing, commenting 'It is amazing the amount of beauty one finds in horrible things like these'. With her sister Doris (as children they were known as 'Big Zinc' - Doris - and 'Little Zinc' - Anna) she painted murals on both the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. During World War II she worked at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, in the mornings nursing in the casualty ward and in the afternoons painting in a disused operating theatre. Examples of her work from this period can be seen at the Imperial War Museum, London. * * * Doris Clare Zinkeisen (British artist) 1898 - 1991 Doris Clare Zinkeisen was a Scottish theatrical stage and costume designer, painter, commercial artist and writer. She was best known for her work in theatrical design. Doris Zinkeisen was born in Rosneath, Argyll, Scotland. Her parents were Welsh-born Clare Bolton-Charles and Victor Zinkeisen, a timber merchant and amateur artist from Glasgow. Her father's family were originally from Bohemia and had been settled in Scotland for two hundred years. She had a younger sister, Anna Zinkeisen who also became an artist. The family left Scotland and moved to Pinner, near Harrow in 1909. Zinkeisen shared a studio in London with her sister during the 1920s and 30's from where she embarked on her career as a painter, commercial artist and theatrical designer. Zinkeisen's realist style made her popular as a portraitist and she became a well-known society painter.The subject matter of her paintings, society portraiture, equestrian portraiture and scenes from the parks of London and Paris reflect the lifestyle of the upper class at the time. She also worked widely in other media as an illustrator and commercial artist including producing advertising posters for several British railway companies, the London Underground and murals for the RMS Queen Mary.
