227

After Anna Zinkeisen

1901-1976

Sailing ship with figurehead and sea creatures, circa 1930s

Wool tapestry
Signed to the weave, a small panel depicting a stylized sailing ship with a mermaid figurehead holding a trident
46" H x 50" W

  • Provenance:
    From the Collection of Robert A. Day
  • Notes:
    Anna Katrina Zinkeisen was a Scottish painter and artist. Born in Kilcreggan, Scotland, she later moved with her family to Middlesex, England in 1909. Anna and her sister, artist Doris Clare Zinkeisen, attended Harrow School of Art before they both won scholarships to the Royal Academy Schools. Anna studied sculpture between 1916 and 1921, winning silver and bronze medals, and first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1919. She was later commissioned to design decorative plaques for the Wedgwood pottery company, and although these designs were awarded a silver medal at the Exposition des Art Decoratifs in Paris in 1925, Zinkeisen decided to specialize in portrait painting and mural work.

    In 1935, the Zinkeisen sisters were commissioned by the Clydebank shipbuilders John Brown and Company to paint murals on the renowned ocean liner RMS "Queen Mary." Some of their work can still be seen on the ship, now permanently moored in Long Beach, California. In 1940 both sisters also contributed murals to the liner RMS "Queen Elizabeth."
    During World War II, Anna and Doris Zinkelsen worked as war and medical artists; Anna also as a nursing auxiliary at St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, London. After completing a shift working on a ward as a casualty nurse, Anna is said to have used a disused operating theater as her studio to work on her paintings of scenes in the hospital and depictions of air-raid victims.

    A portrait, figure, landscape, and mural painter, artist and book illustrator Anna Zinkeisen exhibited widely including at the Royal Academy 1921-1964; Royal Society of British Artists; Royal Hibernian Academy; Royal Institute of Oil Painters; Society of Women Artists; Royal Scottish Academy; Redfern Gallery and abroad. Her self-portrait is on display in the National Portrait Gallery (London), and the NPG holds several 1930s photographs of Anna in the process of painting the murals of the RMS Queen Mary.
    This small signed tapestry, in an Art Deco style echoing Anna Zinkeisen's designs for the Queen Mary, depicts a wave's-eye view of a stylized sailing ship plowing through the open water, guided by a helmeted Britannia-style mermaid figurehead with a trident and accompanied by denizens of the deep water and of the air, all impelled forward by Boreas/Aquilo or one of the cardinal winds.
  • Condition: Overall good condition with dust accumulation, fading and general wear commensurate with age. The added red border detached from edges in places. With linen lining verso, detached at lower edge.

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