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Anna Zinkeisen (1901 - 1976)
Size:
Height – 40.6cm x Width – 56cm
Provenance: ICI Corporate Art Collection
Literature: Joyce Watkins, The Studio, 123 (1942), pp 107-111, The Advertiser as Art Patron, ICI Ltd. Art and Industry, 1950, issue 48 p. 36
This was one of a number of Zinkeisen paintings commissioned by ICI Ltd in the 1940’s as part of their Aspects of Industry series. Other artists who contributed to the scheme included Cuneo, Pears, Wadsworth, Nevinson and Skeaping and Anna’s sister Doris.
This still life, commissioned in the late
1940’s, celebrates the invention of a new dye called Caledon Jade
Green. The painting was subsequently used for an ICI
advertisement which, ironically, was reproduced in black
and white.
According to the 1950 issue of Art and Industry, Caledon
Jade Green is especially resistant to laudering and dry-cleaning,
besides being little affected by bright sun light. Its discovery
was a major achievement of the British dyestuffs industry, and ranks as
one of the worlds’s five greatest dyestuffs discoveries of recent
years, three of which have been the work of I.C.I chemists, issue 48, p. 36
We are grateful to Philip Kelleway for his assistance
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Anna Zinkeisen studied drawing and anatomy before winning
a scholarship to the Royal Academy Schools in 1916 to study
sculpture ‘ exhibiting at the RA in 1919 and winning the
Landseer Award in 1920 and 1921.
On leaving the RA, she worked with her sister Doris on
murals for the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth liners and
produced notable portraits. She also provided illustrations for
several books, including Sophy Cassmajor by Margery Sharp,
published in 1934.
While volunteering as a nurse at St. Mary’s Hospital during
the Second World War, Zinkeisen made pathological drawings of
war injuries for the Royal College of Surgeons. She was awarded
RDI in 1940. In her self-portrait of 1944 (held in the NPG),
clutching a bundle of paint brushes and wearing the bracelet of
the St John’s Ambulance Brigade, for which she was volunteering,
her gaze leaves the viewer in no doubt as to her professional status.