A painter, illustrator, and commercial artist, Doris Zinkeisen was best known for her work as a theatrical stage and costume designer. Indeed, it was her role as chief costume and scenery designer for the popular London revues produced by Charles B. Cochran that brought Zinkeisen to Australia in 1929. Her brief visit coincided with Cochran's production of the Noel Coward revue This Year of Grace, which toured Australia that same year.
In terms of her Australian presence, Zinkeisen is worth noting due to the fact that her image appeared twice on the cover of the influential publication The Home: An Australian Quarterly. From 'its inception in 1920', this highly regarded publication developed 'a pictorial vocabulary' that was foregrounded by the modernist artworks that appeared on its cover. In the first instance, Zinkeisen's painting Self Portrait appeared on the cover of the April 1929 issue of the journal. Two years later, a second portrait of Zinkeisen graced the cover, representing the development of a new aesthetic for the journal's cover art.
During her time in Australia, Zinkeisen had posed for a series of portraits that were the collaborative work of photographer Harold Cazneaux and artist Adrian Feint (qq.v.). Notably, it was one of these striking, modernist portraits that was 'later chosen for cover status' on the February 1931 issue of The Home and 'thus predates by more than a year the first appearance of a photographic cover on Vogue in July 1932' (Source: Robert Holden Cover Up: The Art of Magazine Covers in Australia, 1995).
