Joy Hester
Hester
Born
Joy St Clair Hester

(1920-08-21)21 August 1920
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Died4 December 1960(1960-12-04) (aged 40)
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
NationalityAustralian
Known forPainting and drawing
Notable workLove series, Incredible night's dream series, Harry
MovementAngry Penguins
Spouse(s)Albert Tucker (1941–1947)
Gray Smith (1959–)

Joy St Clair Hester (21 August 1920 – 4 December 1960) was an Australian artist. She was a member of the Angry Penguins movement and the Heide Circle who played an integral role in the development of Australian Modernism.[1] Hester is best known for her bold and expressive ink drawings.[1] Her work was charged with a heightened awareness of mortality due to the death of her father during her childhood, the threat of war, and her personal experience with Hodgkin's disease.[2] Hester is most well known for the series Face, Sleep, and Love (1948–49)[3] as well as the later works, The Lovers (1956–58).[1]

Biography

Early life

Hester was born on the 21 August 1920 and raised in Elwood to middle-class parents Louise and Robert Hester. Robert died from a heart attack when Hester was twelve.[4] Hester studied art from an early age and was a student at St Michael's Grammar School from 1933 to 1937.[5] At 17, Hester enrolled in Commercial Art at Brighton Technical School for one year before leaving to attend the National Gallery School in Melbourne.[3] Her curriculum was based in traditional media and practice, however Hester took the opportunity to break free from formal restraints.[2] In 1938 Hester won the Gallery School's Drawing Head from Life prize.[6] Taking up classes at both the Design school, and Painting and Life school gave her early recognition.[2] Her work during this time, though bound by tradition, was concerned with shadow and tonal shading, the relationships between dark and light.[2]

Heide period

In 1938 Hester met fellow artist Albert Tucker and began living with him intermittently in East Melbourne.[6] During the same year Hester became a founding member of the Contemporary Art Society (CAS), exhibiting with them annually.[7] Hester met Melbourne-based art patron Sunday Reed in 1939 at the Herald Exhibition, which brought British and French artworks to Australia for the first time.[6] The two became friends, with Reed nurturing Hester's artistic talent.[6] Spending much of her time at Heide with Sunday and her husband John Reed, Hester became a member of the Heide Circle.[1] She was a contemporary of Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Charles Blackman, John Perceval, Yosl Bergner and Danila Vassilieff during this period.[1] The Heide Circle worked as an extension of the Angry Penguins magazine.[8] Hester was the only woman to be featured in the Angry Penguins publication.[3]

One of her most significant works from this time was Nude Study, (c. 1939–41).[2] It was her first use of bold, fluid black line work, which is what she is known for today.[2]

During the early 40s, Hester began depicting the ambience of daily life, via ink drawings of street scenes and factory workers.[2] She was influenced by artist Ailsa O'Connor, who had similar concerns in her work.[2] Hester was also drawn to the work of Vassilieff for his philosophical views about how art and life could not be separated.[2]

By the mid 40s, Hester relinquished her interest in oil painting to concentrate solely on watercolor and inks.[1] Her focus shifted towards the motif of the human face, specifically the expression in the eyes.[9] Using minimal and assertive ink strokes, she rendered her figures with emotional intensity.[1] A Frightened Woman (1945) served as a seminal point in establishing Hester's style and media moving forward. Hester works aimed to capture the psychological horror of World War II.[2]

Hester and Tucker married 1941.[10] Five years later Hester gave birth to a son, Sweeney Reed (1944–1979).[6] In 1947, when Sweeney was three, Hester was diagnosed with terminal Hodgkin's lymphoma.[6] Believing she had only 2 years to live, she decided to move to Sydney to live with Melbourne artist Gray Smith, and gave her son into the care of John and Sunday Reed, who subsequently adopted him.[3] Illness impacted heavily on Hester's work and left an indelible mark, loading it with emotional content.[2] During this period Hester produced the drawings that became part of her notable Face, Sleep and Love series.[3] These works were exhibited alongside Hester's poetry in 1950 at her first solo show at the Melbourne Bookclub Gallery.

Later life

Hester had two subsequent solo exhibitions in 1955 and 1956[2] but struggled to sell her art.[9] She typically worked on a small scale in black ink and wash, however, Australian modernism favoured large oil paintings,[9] like those of Nolan.[11] Hester's work failed to garner the same recognition her male peers received, dismissed by critics as "angst-ridden".[4]

The Lovers series (1956–58) were indicative of her maturing and expressive style. She also published poetry and used her drawings to illustrate her words.[9]

Joy and Smith had two children, a son, Peregrine, in 1951, and a daughter, Fern, in 1954.[9] The couple married in 1959.[8] After a period of remission Hester suffered a relapse of Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1956 and died on 4 December 1960, aged 40.[3] Hester was laid to rest at the Box Hill Cemetery in an unmarked grave, at her behest.[1]

Legacy

John and Sunday Reed organised a commemorative exhibition of Hester's work in 1963.[12] In 1978, a street in the Canberra suburb of Chisholm was named Hester Place in her honour.[13] In 1981, Janine Burke, Hester's biographer, curated the first major retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria.[14] Hester's life and work was the subject of a documentary, The Good Looker, in 1995.[15] A plaque was erected in 1999 at the Box Hill Cemetery in honour of Hester's contribution to the arts.[16] Reviewing her work for Time in 2001, Michael Fitzgerald wrote "Forty-one years after her death, Hester's drawings still suck the oxygen from the air, providing some of the clearest-eyed images in Australian art".[14] In 2018 her Love and The Lovers series of works featured in a joint exhibit with Patricia Piccinini at TarraWarra Museum of Art. Piccinini credited Hester as a major influence on her own practice; stating: "I love the way her painting, especially those with merged features, are simultaneously surreal and figurative. I am really interested in depictions of love and intimacy in my own work, so I find Hester's approach very inspiring".[17]

Two plays have been written about her life: Joy by Christine Croyden,[18] and Hester by Wendy Beckett.[19] Joy Hester's art was included in the exhibition, Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now at the National Gallery of Australia, in 2021-2022.[20]

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

Posthumous solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions

Posthumous group exhibitions

Collections

Hester's prominence, alongside her Heide Circle counterparts, in shaping Australian modernism have resulted in many Australian institutions acquiring her work.

Published poems, letters and miscellaneous

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Burke, Janine (1983). Joy Hester. Richmond, Victoria, Australia: Greenhouse Publications. ISBN 0909104603. OCLC 11370322.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Hart, Deborah (2001). Joy Hester and Friends. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia. ISBN 0642541655. OCLC 49763040.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Burke, Janine (1996). "Hester, Joy St Clair (1920–1960)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Vol. 14. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. ISSN 1833-7538.
  4. ^ a b Macgill, Belinda (January 2000). "Joy Hester: a subjective approach". Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art. 1 (1): 79–93. doi:10.1080/14434318.2000.11432655. ISSN 1443-4318. S2CID 184855099.
  5. ^ "Joy Hester b. 1920 Elsternwick, Melbourne, Vic". Design and Art Australia Online. Retrieved 15 September 2014.
  6. ^ a b c d e f Hester, Joy (1995). Dear Sun : the letters of Joy Hester and Sunday Reed. Reed, Sunday, 1905–1981., Burke, Janine, 1952–. Port Melbourne, Victoris: William Heinemann Australia. ISBN 0855616512. OCLC 34338334.
  7. ^ "Hester, Joy (1920–1960) – People and organisations". Trove. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  8. ^ a b "Joy Hester :: The Collection :: Art Gallery NSW". www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
  9. ^ a b c d e Mimmocchi, Denise (2004). "The Art of Joy Hester: "In Defence of Unwritten History"". Woman's Art Journal. 25 (2): 16–20. doi:10.2307/3566512. ISSN 0270-7993. JSTOR 3566512.
  10. ^ "Family Notices". The Argus. Melbourne: National Library of Australia. 2 May 1941. p. 4. Retrieved 15 September 2014.
  11. ^ Fitzgerald, Michael (10 September 2001). "Love and Pain Neglected for decades, Joy Hester's art explores human emotions with an unflinching eye". Time. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
  12. ^ Burke, Janine (2001). "Joy Hester". Art Collector (17). Archived from the original on 17 April 2018. Retrieved 15 September 2014.
  13. ^ "Schedule 'B' National Memorials Ordinance 1928–1972 Street Nomenclature List of Additional Names with Reference to Origin – Commonwealth of Australia Gazette. Special (National : 1977 – 2012) – 8 Feb 1978". Trove. Retrieved 3 September 2019.
  14. ^ a b Fitzgerald, Michael (10 September 2001). "Love and Pain Neglected for decades, Joy Hester's art explores human emotions with an unflinching eye". Time. New York City. Retrieved 15 September 2014.
  15. ^ "The Good Looker (1995)". Australian Screen Online. National Film and Sound Archive. Retrieved 15 September 2014.
  16. ^ "Joy Hester 1920 – 1960 BillionGraves Record". BillionGraves. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  17. ^ "Patricia Piccinini & Joy Hester: Through Love..." by Victoria Lynn, TarraWarra Museum of Art: 2018, ISBN 978 0 9944552 7 7, p15
  18. ^ "Joy – a performance". Christine Croyden. Retrieved 13 June 2021.
  19. ^ "Hester". Wendy Beckett. Retrieved 13 June 2021.
  20. ^ National Gallery of Australia. "Joy Hester". National Gallery of Australia. Retrieved 12 October 2022.
  21. ^ "Joy Hester: Remember Me", Heide Museum of Modern Art
  22. ^ "Joy Hester & Friends – 1 September – 28 October 2001", National Gallery of Australia

Further reading

External links

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