Rosa Hope's The Old Miii was shown on the SASA 35th Annual Exhibition in 1937, and acquired by the SANG, as noted by critic Melvin Simmers (qv.), for its "extraordinarily strong sense of drawing" (Cape Times 23.8.1937).
Hope had trained at the Slade and Central Schools of Art, London, and in 1926 won the Prix de Rome for her etching The Adoration of the Shepherds, which was subsequently shown at the RA. She was then elected an ARE.
In 1935 she visited South Africa, and her former teacher at the Slade, Professor John Wheatley, offered her an appointment as a lecturer at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, UCT. She accepted, became a SASA member (South African Society of Artists), and started the School's Department of Printmaking and Engraving.
In 1938 she was made a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, where she remained until 1957. Once in Natal, she painted in the Drakensberg and travelled to the Transkei. Loyal to the examples of tradition and technical precedent in printmaking, and unaffected by the controversies around modernism, she continued exhibiting with SASA until 1942.
Curriculum Vitae
Exhibitor an SASA-related exhibitions c.1898 - 1950:
1936: SASA sect., with NA & indep. artists, 6th Annual Exh. ofContemp. Art,SANG, 17 Dec. - 17 Feb. 1937.
1937: SASA sect., with NA. 7th Annual Exh. of Contemp. Art, SANG, 15 Dec. – 14 Feb. 1938.
1937: SASA 35tfi Annual Exh., AG, Burg St., 23 August.
1938: SASA sect., with NA, 8th Annual Exh. of Contemp. Art, SANG, 15 Dec -15 Feb.1939.
1940: SASA 37th Annual Exh., AG, Burg St., 29 Jan - 10 Feb. 1941: SASA 38thAnnual Exh., SANG, 17 Feb. - 31 Mar.
1942: SASA Winter Exh. (venue not stated) 14 – 29 Aug.