Doris Clare Zinkeisen (1897-1991) was born in Scotland. When her family moved to the south of England, she studied first at the Harrow School of Art then took up a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Art. Her painterly skills combined well with her stylised and sophisticated eye for theatre design, a combination which resulted in highly successful work as both society portrait painter and designer of sets and costumes for West End productions and films. Her paintings of this period very much reflect the somewhat brittle but wonderfully glamorous appearance of contemporary high society. She and her sister, Anna, worked together to produce distinctive murals for RMS Queen Mary (1935) and RMS Queen Elizabeth (1940). and both sisters painted striking travel posters for various railway companies - https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co229128/to-york-dick-turpins-ride-poster

During the Second World War, Doris worked for the St John Ambulance Brigade, and as a war artist made drawings of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after its liberation - a harrowing commission, the sights and sounds she witnessed left an indelible impression. https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/38950 Widowed shortly after the war, she and her children moved to Badingham in Suffolk.

‘The Morning Stroll’ was exhibited in 1949 and is representative of her smart society pictures, fine folk parading across a park, on foot or on horseback, perhaps seated in a dashing phaeton or elegant gig with a matched pair of high stepping thoroughbreds to the fore. A particular genre - perhaps a  decorative and stylised rendition in paint of another successful woman from that era, Georgette Heyer (1902-1974), writer of historical romances such as Regency Buck and The Corinthian - novels which conjured up just this type of scene.

In fact Doris Zinkeisen was an extremely accomplished horse woman - she won the Moscow Cup at the reinstated International Horse Show of 1934 and painted many horse portraits - including in later life, the champion racehorse Mill Reef, widely recognised as one of the greatest thoroughbreds of the modern day. The horse was bred and owned by Paul Mellon. equally recognised as one of the greatest American philanthropists of the 20th Century and the man who assembled one of the finest and most comprehensive collections of British art in the world. A commission from Paul Mellon was recognition indeed. Her painting of Mill Reef is held in the Fred Packard Gallery at the British Sporting Art Trust, Palace House, Newmarket.