Hope first went to a school in
Romiley, but then attended the
Manchester High School for Girls, with her twin sister
Muriel. In 1918 she started training at the
Slade School of Art in London on a scholarship of £20 and in 1926 won the
Prix de Rome for her etching
The Adoration of the Shepherds, which was subsequently shown at the
Royal Academy. She studied under
Henry Tonks (1862-1937),
Philip Wilson Steer (1860-1942) and John Wheatley (1892-1955). At this time she was living at 40 Downshire Hill,
Hampstead, N.W, the same house where
Mark Rutherford, the novelist, lived in 1852. When she visited South Africa in 1935, her former teacher at the Slade School, Professor
John Laviers Wheatley, offered her a teaching post at the
Michaelis School of Fine Art at the
University of Cape Town. She founded the school's printmaking and engraving department. In 1938 she accepted the post of Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at the
University of Natal in
Pietermaritzburg, where she remained until 1957. From here she made frequent painting trips to the
Drakensberg and
Transkei, occasionally accompanied by her friend and fellow painter,
Phyllis McCarthy. The Centre for Visual Art at the
University of Natal has been entrusted with a donation of her works. Rosa Hope designed the tile tableau of the Great Trek Centenary in the
Irene Post Office in 1939. In January 1923 she was elected an Associate of the
Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers. She exhibited drawings at the
New English Art Club, the
Redfern Gallery, Old Bond Street and Messrs. P. and D.
Colnaghi at the
Grosvenor Galleries. She was a member of the
Society of Graphic Art, the
Hampstead Society of Artists and the
Print Collectors’ Club. She exhibited with the South African Society of Artists (SASA) until 1942. == Gallery ==