Joy Hester

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Joy Hester (1920-1960) was an Australian artist who lived a tumultuous, uncompromising and tragic life. She played an important, though often underrated role in the development of Australian modernism. Hester was born in the Melbourne suburb of Elsternwick in Victoria on August 12, 1920.

She studied art from an early age, and at 17 was enrolled in Commercial Art at Brighton Technical School. She then attended the National Gallery Art School in Melbourne. During this time she met Albert Tucker, who she married in 1941. Hester and Tucker had a son, Sweeney Reed (1944-1979).

When Sweeney was three, Hester was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. Believing she had only months to live (in fact she lived another 12 years) she decided to move to London and gave her son into the care of John Reed and Sunday Reed, the influential, Melbourne-based art patrons, who subsequently adopted him. It emerged many years later that Tucker was not Sweeney's biological father, and that he was probably the son of Melbourne jazz drummer Billy Hyde, with whom Hester had had a brief affair. As a child, Sweeney became a close friend of Philippe Mora. Mora, now a noted film director, is the eldest son of pioneering Australian modern art art dealer and restauranteur Georges Mora and his wife, the painter Mirka Mora, who were close friends of the Reeds and the entire Heide circle.

Hester was a contemporary of Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Charles Blackman, John Perceval and Danila Vassilieff. She helped to establish the Contemporary Art Society (CAS) and was associated with the modernist movement, the Angry Penguins.

1947 was a watershed year for Hester. She fell in love with Melbourne artist Gray Smith and decided to move to Sydney with him. She left Tucker and placed Sweeney in the care of the Reeds. Around the same time she was diagnosed with Hodgkins disease, a painful and terminal illness. The illness impacted heavily on Hester’s work and left an indelible mark on it, loaded with emotional content. She moved back to Melbourne in 1948 and married Gray in 1959. They had two children, Fern and Peregrine.

Hester had 3 solo exhibitions but struggled to sell work which was often dark and emotionally disturbing. She worked mainly in black ink and wash, using quick, spontaneous lines guided by stream of consciousness. She also wrote poetry and used her drawings to illustrate her words.

Hester died in 1960 after a thirteen year battle with Hodgkin's disease.

A number of commemorative exhibitions of Joy Hester’s work have been held, including: Georges Gallery in Melbourne (1963) and the National Gallery of Victoria (1981) and a touring exhibition curated by Lauraine Diggins (1993). Her work is also included in a number of publications: Australian Women Artists; 1840-1940, Ewing & George Paton Galleries, University of Melbourne, 1975; The Great Australian Art Exhibition 1788-1988; A Century of Australian Women Artists 1840s-1940s, Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne 1993.

[edit] References

Burke, Janine, Australian Women Artists 1840-1940, Greenhouse, Melbourne, 1980
Burke, Janine, Joy Hester, Greenhouse Publications, Melbourne 1985.
Heathcote, Christopher (1995). A Quiet Revolution: The Rise of Australian Art, 1946-1968. Melbourne, Vic: Text Publishing, 267p. ISBN 1875847103.

McCulloch, Alan & Susan, The Encyclopedia of Australian Art, Allen & Unwin, 1994.
Smith, Bernard, with Terry Smith & Christopher Heathcote (2001). Australian Painting 1788-2000. Melbourne, Vic: Oxford University Press, 630p. ISBN 0-19-551554-5.