Title: Knobthorns in Bloom
Medium: Oil on board
Unframed: 71cm x 90cm
Ruth Everard Hayden was a member of Everard Group a unique family of women painters. Most of their work represented rural and remote areas of the Mpumalanga district of Carolina where their family farms were situated (Berman 1970:109).
The painting, Knobthorns in Blossom, by Ruth is a wonderful example of her style of painting influenced by the French spirit of the Fauves, Formalism, and her mentor André Lhote during her studies in France. These painting ideologies were adapted to represent the South African landscape where she settled on a farm close to the family farm in the Carolina district after marrying W.D. Hayden (Berman 1970:111).
Ruth’s work is less perceptual than her sister Rosamund and mother Bertha and shares with her aunt Edith King a feeling of organic pattern. Her work focuses more on mass than linear pattern with a heavier paint application that emphasise the fullness of her forms according to Esme Berman (1970:111).
