Doris ZINKEISEN (1898-1991) ~ Ballerina and Theatre ✿

Doris Clare Zinkeisen (31 July 1898 – 3 January 1991) was a Scottish theatrical stage and costume designer, painter, commercial artist, and writer. She was best known for her work in theatrical design.

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. An early success was her 1925 portrait of the actor Elsa Lanchester.

She also worked widely in other media as an illustrator and commercial artist including producing advertising posters for several British mainline railway companies and murals for the RMS Queen Mary. A 1939 poster for the London Underground, At the Theatre, was printed but never issued due to the start of World War II.

In 1944, Doris and her sister Anna were commissioned by United Steel Companies (USC) to produce twelve paintings that were reproduced in the trade and technical press in Britain, Canada, Australia and South Africa. The images were subsequently collated in a book, This Present Age, published in 1946. Zinkeisen exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1929, at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in London[6] and in Paris and the United States. She received Bronze (1929), Silver (1930) and Gold (1934) Paris Salon medals for her work. By 1929 she had been elected a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters (ROI).