Artists

Rosamund Everard-Steenkamp, the younger daughter of Bertha Everard, was born in Carolina, Mpumalanga in 1907. Raised in the then Eastern Transvaal, she was educated at Eunice Girls’ High School in Bloemfontein and she went on to study music in Paris and London. She left her studies to return to South Africa and became a highly successful farmer, whilst painting and playing music in her spare time.
Everard-Steenkamp qualified as a pilot in England before the Second World War, and she continued to teach for the South African Airforce during the war. She married fellow pilot Nicolaas Steenkamp in 1940, but was tragically widowed two years later. Everard-Steenkamp regularly flew between South Africa and Egypt and in 1944 she joined the Air Transport Auxiliary in England. It is thought that she was the first woman ever to pilot a jet aircraft. She died in an accident whist flying a spitfire in England in 1946 when she was only 32 years old.
Rosamund Everard-Steenkamp had no formal art training but learned from her mother Bertha. She painted in oils with a vigour and energy, using strong and direct linear marks in strident colours, but she was also influenced by her aunt Edith’s lyrical observation of Nature, and she was a member of the New Group.
Everard-Steenkamp exhibited on group exhibitions, including with the Everard Group between 1931 and 1944 and on the 1936 Empire Exhibition in Johannesburg, and her paintings were included in The Everard Group prestige retrospective art exhibition at the Pretoria Art Museum in 1967. Her work is represented in private collections throughout South Africa and in the William Humphries Art Gallery in Kimberley and the Tatham Art Gallery in Pietermaritzburg.