Doris Zinkeisen – from glitzy of Broadway to the grit of capturing wartime on canvas
DURING the Second World War, gunnery officers aboard RMS Queen Mary carelessly tacked their charts to a stunning mural in the on-board restaurant.
The mural had been painted by Doris Zinkeisen and her sister Anna, who were asked to restore the mural after the war.
Doris sneakily added a mouse, or so the story goes, because Cunard always boasted that their ships were rodent-free.
This wee ruse perfectly sums up the Argyll-born theatrical designer, painter and writer who was one of the brightest young things of the interwar art world. Yet, despite her glittering career, many people have never heard her name.
After training at Harrow School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools, Doris began working in London’s West End, rising through the ranks and creating costumes for the likes of Laurence Olivier, and sets for Noël Coward and James Whale, to whom she was briefly engaged, despite him being openly gay.
Broadway beckoned and soon she was the toast of showbiz. Her work can be seen in Show Boat, Richard III and many Herbert Wilcox films. Wilcox even based his film Blue Danube on one of her short stories. She also wrote Designing for the Stage, a guide to her craft.
Doris was also a painter – her railway posters for LNER featured scenes and people from history, including Rob Roy.
She was well-known among the upper classes for her portraits of people and horses, as well as scenes of London and Paris park life. And she didn’t just paint horses – in 1934, she won the Moscow Cup at the International Horse Show. Having trained as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse during the First World War, Doris joined the St John Ambulance Brigade at the outbreak of the Second World War. She tended to those injured in the Blitz by day and kept a visual diary of war-torn London by night.
“The sight was awful, the smell she could never forget
In the final months of the war, she was employed by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee to document relief work in Europe by the British Red Cross and the Order of St John. Doris was one of a handful of artists to enter Bergenbelsen concentration camp soon after it was liberated.
The experience haunted Doris. “She always told us that the sight was awful, but the smell she could never forget. She had nightmares for the rest of her life,” said her son Murray.
Doris Zinkeisen died in 1991, at the age of 92. Her incredible career deserves to be better remembered in her native Scotland and beyond.