One of the most fashionable portrait painters of the inter-war years, Zinkeisen won a scholarship to the Royal Academy Schools in 1917, graduating into the exotic London art world of the roaring twenties. She was a creative power house, designing posters for the various British railway companies of the day, painting murals and interior designing schemes for two of the great ocean liners of the 1930s and becoming celebrated as the leading set and costume designer for British stage and screen. During the Second War she worked as an official war artist with the Red Cross, recording its activities in the northern European theatre. In this capacity she found herself in the newly liberated Bergen-Belsen Camp where she produced a number of harrowing works now in the Imperial War Museum. Her self portrait in the National Portrait Gallery enjoyed a recent high profile on dozens of posters covering billboards during the recent refurbishment closure.
