Joy Hester

Joy St Clair Hester (21 August 1920 - 4 December 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. 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. Australian Dictionary of Biography
last= Burke
first= Janine
authorlink=
year=1996
id=A140509b
title= Hester, Joy St Clair (1920 - 1960)
accessdate=2008-03-14 ]

Heide period

Hester became part of the Heide Circle and met Albert Tucker, who she married in 1941. 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. Hester and Tucker had a son, Sweeney Reed (1944-1979). In 1947, when Sweeney was three, Hester was diagnosed with terminal Hodgkin's lymphoma. Believing she had only months to live, she decided to move to Sydney to live with Melbourne artist Gray Smith, 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 restaurateur Georges Mora and his wife, the painter Mirka Mora, who were close friends of the Reeds and the entire Heide circle.Fact|date=March 2008

Sweeney Reed committed suicide in 1979.

Return to Melbourne

The illness impacted heavily on Hester’s work and left an indelible mark on it, loaded with emotional content. Hester and Gray moved to Hurstbridge on the northeastern fringes of Melbourne in 1948 and later lived at at Avonsleigh and Upwey in the Dandenong Ranges. She married Gray in 1959. They had two children against medical advice, 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.

After a period of remission Hester suffered a relapse of Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1956, and died in the Melbourne suburb of Prahran in 1960.

Exhibitions

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.

Notes

Persondata
NAME = Hester, Joy St Clair
ALTERNATIVE NAMES =
SHORT DESCRIPTION = Australian painter
DATE OF BIRTH = 21 August 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH = Elsternwick, Victoria
DATE OF DEATH = 4 December 1960
PLACE OF DEATH = Prahran, Victoria