HERMANA

Christa Zaat

Anna Katrina Zinkeisen (British painter and artist) 1901 - 1976
Portrait of Julia Heseltine, s.d.
oil on canvas 
91.5 x 71.2 cm. (36 x 28 in.)
signed 'A. Zinkeisen' (lower left) 
private collection

Julia Heseltine, painter; daughter of Anna Katrina Zinkeisen and Guy R.N. Heseltine.

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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.