Descended from a Flemish weaver, a refugee who had settled in Scotland two centuries before, Anna Zinkeisen was born in Killcreggan on the Clyde estuary. By the age of fifteen, she had won a scholarship to the Royal Academy where she studied sculpture under Sims, Clausen and Philpott, winning silver and bronze medals and exhibiting from 1919. She went on to design for  Wedgwood, and she retained an interest in 3D plastic form but in 1925 she decided to specialise in portrait painting and mural work. In 1935, Anna and her sister Doris, were commissioned to paint the murals in the Verandah Grill of the RMS Queen Mary, and Anna also painted murals for the Queen Elizabeth. In 1941, during the Second World War, the Zinkeisen sisters were both employed as war artists, making studies of war injuries for pathologists. Anna painted still lifes from early in her career but in April 1962 an exhibition of her flower paintings was held at the Royal Society of British Artists in the Mall. The New Daily newspaper described the paintings as 'brilliant performances, lucid, bold, designed with astonishing accuracy, strength and assurance .... every shade of colour blazes from Anna Zinkeisen's flower pieces: here are the lily and the rose, the camellia, and a great sheaf of gorgeous autumn flowers.'

This exuberant spray of summer flowers is arranged in a Dartmouth Pottery swan vase, first produced in the 1950s.