32 Facts About Doris Zinkeisen

Doris Clare Zinkeisen was a Scottish theatrical stage and costume designer, painter, commercial artist, and writer.

Doris Zinkeisen was best known for her work in theatrical design.

Doris Zinkeisen was born in Clynder House in Rosneath, Argyll, Scotland.

Doris Zinkeisen's parents were Welsh-born Clare Bolton-Charles and Victor Zinkeisen, a shipper, manufacturer and yarn merchant and amateur artist from Glasgow.

Doris Zinkeisen's father was Scottish-born, but both of his parents had emigrated from Altenburg in Thuringia in around 1859 and had settled in Scotland.

Doris Zinkeisen had a younger sister, Anna Zinkeisen, who became an artist.

Doris Zinkeisen shared a studio in London with her sister during the 1920s and 1930s from where she embarked on her career as a painter, commercial artist, and theatrical designer.

Doris Zinkeisen produced a number of posters for London and North Eastern Railway, Southern Railway, and the London, Midland and Scottish Railway in the 1930s.

Doris Zinkeisen was involved in planning the interior decoration which featured a parquet dance floor surrounded by black Wilton carpets, star-studded red velvet curtains and a sweeping illuminated balustrade whose colours changed in time with the music.

Doris Zinkeisen exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1929, at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in London and in Paris and the United States.

Doris Zinkeisen received Bronze, Silver and Gold Paris Salon medals for her work.

Doris Zinkeisen was a successful stage and costume designer for plays and films.

Doris Zinkeisen started to work in stage design as soon as she completed her studies at the Royal Academy.

Playfair wanted Doris Zinkeisen to sing in the productions, but Doris Zinkeisen insisted on remaining behind the scenes.

Miss Doris Zinkeisen seems to me to follow the best traditions of English theatrical decoration.

In 1928, Doris Zinkeisen designed the costumes for This Year of Grace by Noel Coward at the London Pavilion.

In 1955, Doris Zinkeisen created Laurence Olivier's make-up for the film version of Richard III.

Doris Zinkeisen worked in the casualty department in the mornings and painted in the afternoons, recording the events of the day.

Doris Zinkeisen traveled by lorry or by air throughout north-west Europe making sketches which she brought back to her studio in the commission's headquarters for further work.

Doris Zinkeisen was one of a small number of artists who produced pictures of Bergen-Belsen in the months following its liberation.

Doris Zinkeisen's painting Human Laundry shows German orderlies washing camp inmates before they go to hospital.

Doris Zinkeisen wrote to her husband while she was at Belsen.

Doris Zinkeisen always told us that the sight was awful, but the smell she could never forget.

Doris Zinkeisen had nightmares for the rest of her life.

Doris Zinkeisen's work was part of the painting event in the art competition at the 1948 Summer Olympics.

Doris Zinkeisen designed the cover of a special edition of Everybody's Magazine to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953.

In 1954, Doris Zinkeisen designed the scenery and costumes for Noel Coward's musical, After the Ball, based on Oscar Wilde's play, Lady Windermere's Fan, and the Prince Littler directed play, The Little Glass Clock, written by Hugh Mills.

In 1922, while working with Nigel Playfair, Doris Zinkeisen met James Whale.

Doris Zinkeisen married naval officer Edward Grahame Johnstone in 1927 and had twin daughters in June 1928, the children's book illustrators Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone and a son, Murray Johnstone.

Doris Zinkeisen was a fine horsewoman and won the Moscow Cup at the International Horse Show in 1934.

Doris Zinkeisen outlived her daughter Janet who died in an accident in 1979.

Doris Zinkeisen died on 3 January 1991, in Badingham in Suffolk, aged 93.