Additional Images

Provenance:

Collection of Rosa Hermannsson
Private Collection, Ontario
By descent to the present owner

Literature:

Bertram Brooker, The Seven Arts, The Citizen and Associated Newspapers of the Southam Publishing Co., November 1929.

Exhibited:

51st Annual Exhibition, Royal Canadian Academy, The Art Gallery of Toronto, Toronto, November 1930, no. 21.

Note:

Rosa Hermannsson was the sixth of seven children born in Manitoba to parents of Icelandic origin.  At the age of 17, Hermannsson moved to Winnipeg and began to study singing as a contralto.  Pushing her passion still further, the singer moved east to Toronto in 1929 to hone her skills as a mezzo soprano under the guidance of Carl Hunter.  She performed concert tours and also had her own program on a local radio station.
 
Bertram Brooker’s involvement in the arts extended far beyond his own pursuits as a painter.  From 1928 to 1930, Brooker wrote a syndicated newspaper column on artistic activity in Canada.  The Seven Arts, as it was called, reviewed and analyzed visual arts, poetry, theatre and music – linking him to artistic communities across the country. His November 1929 article included a feature on the people of Iceland. Brooker notes that it was through Professor Pilcher, a faculty member at Wycliffe College and a translator of hymns by the poet Halligrimur Pjetursson, that he met Icelanders, “including Rosa Hermansson, a singer well known in Winnipeg, now studying music in Toronto…” Like Hermannsson, Brooker had moved from Manitoba to Toronto in pursuit of expanding his career.
 
Hermannsson’s look is à la mode – come-hither without coquettishness, the kind eyes of a formidable talent cast away from the viewer in a sideways glance.  Speaking of Miss Hermannsson, a reviewer in the Toronto Daily Star wrote: “A refreshing exhibition of lovely tone quality, excellent atmosphere and… indescribable beauty...”  It is as much a description of Hermannsson’s voice as it is of Brooker’s depiction of the woman who possessed it.