Joy Hester b. 1920

Also known as Joy St Clair Hester
  • Artist
Painter known for her ink works. She was married to painter Albert Tucker and associated with many significant Australian modernist artists during the 1940s.

painter, was born in Elsternwick, Victoria. She attended St Michael’s Church of England Girls’ Grammar School in 1933-35 before commencing one year of a commercial art course at Brighton Technical School. She started in the Drawing School of the National Gallery School in 1937 and completed one and a half years, leaving in mid-1938 despite winning a prize for drawing the head from life at the annual students’ exhibition. In 1937 she met the painter Albert Tucker whom she was to marry in 1941; in 1945 they had a son, Sweeney.

During the period 1937-42 she met and became friendly with several artists who are now recognised as the most significant of their generation: Sidney Nolan, Danila Vassilieff, Josl Bergner , Noel Counihan , Arthur Boyd and John Perceval . She was also associated with John Reid and his wife, Sunday, whose home at Heidelberg, Heide, became a centre for many of these artists (c.1940-47).

In 1947 Joy Hester was diagnosed as having Hodgkins’s disease, a malignant cancer of the lymph glands. She moved to Sydney with Gray Smith, leaving Tucker and her son in Melbourne. She married Gray Smith in 1959; there were two children, Peregrine and Fern, from her second marriage.

In her lifetime, Hester had three solo exhibitions: in 1950, 1953 and 1956. She was a foundation member of the Contemporary Art Society and exhibited many times in its annual shows. After returning to Melbourne in 1948, she lived in the semi-rural countryside around Melbourne, at Hurstbridge, Avonsleigh and Upwey, before moving to Box Hill in 1956 where she had her own studio for the first time.

Joy Hester produced a large body of drawings in the period 1939-58. She rarely used oils; instead, from early in her career, she devoted herself to using ink and Chinese brushwork to create her expressionistic, personal images. Her subjects were those of personality and intimacy; faces, lovers and relationships between people were the basis and inspiration of her art. Joy Hester died in 1960 after fighting the disease for 13 years.

Writers:
Burke, Janine
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011