Artists

Ruth Everard-Haden was born in 1904 into a family of female painters who became known as ‘The Everard Group’. Her mother was Bertha Everard who, along with Bertha’s sister, Edith, formed the first generation of the group, followed by Everard-Haden and her sister, Rosamund, then Everard-Haden’s daughter, Leonora, and finally Leonora’s daughters, Nichola and Alana Leigh. Between 1921 and 1922, Everard-Haden enrolled part-time at the Cape Town School of Art before moving to London to attend the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks in 1922. At the end of 1923, she moved to Paris, where she studied at the Colarossi Art School. She returned to South Africa in 1928 and settled on a farm in Mpumalanga near her family’s home, Bonnefoi.

Everard-Haden frequently painted landscapes and portraiture, the influence of her years in Europe evident in her style. She sadly stopped painting in the mid-1950s due to failing eyesight. In 1967, the Pretoria Art Museum held a retrospective exhibition of the work of ‘The Everard Group’. Everard-Haden’s art can be found in such public collections as the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town, the Johannesburg Art Gallery, the Pretoria Art Museum, the Tatham Art Gallery in Pietermaritzburg, and South Africa House in London.