Joy St. Clair (Hester) Smith (1920 - 1960)

Ancestors

Biography

Joy St Clair Hester (1920-1960), artist, was born on 21 August 1920 at Elsternwick, Melbourne, second child of Robert Ferdinand Hester, a bank officer from England, and his wife Louise May, née Bracher, a Victorian-born teacher.

Joy Hester studied art from an early age and was a student at St Michael's Grammar School from 1933 to 1937. Then at 17, enrolled in Commercial Art at Brighton Technical School, before attending the National Gallery School in Melbourne.

She married fellow artist Albert Lee Tucker in 1941 and had one son Sweeney Reed (1944–1979).

Between 1938 and 1947 Hester was part of a stimulating and innovative circle of painters; among them (Sir) Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd and John Perceval, which was colloquially known as the 'Angry Penguins'. She was the only female artist in this collective which met regularly at Heide, the home of the art patrons John and Sunday Reed. Sunday was Hester's closest friend, encouraging her work, supporting her financially and later adopting her first son Sweeney.

In 1947 Hester was diagnosed as having Hodgkin's disease and given a short time to live. She left her husband and young son, and moved to Sydney with fellow artist Gray Smith (1919-1991). She later divorced Tucker to marry Smith 12 months before her death.

From 1948 to 1956 Hester lived with Gray Smith in rural Victoria. Against medical advice she had two more children with Smith. She was in remission from Hodgkin's disease until 1956, when the symptoms re-appeared. Survived by her second husband and their son and daughter, and by the son of her first marriage, she died on 4 December 1960 at Prahran and was buried in Box Hill Cemetery, Melbourne. Presbyterian Section 140 - 5.

Hester drew and rarely painted, favouring the media of brush and ink. It was an unusual choice, one that set her apart from her contemporaries and one that she developed with great skill through her brief career.

Sources

• Janine Burke, Hester, Joy St Clair (1920–1960), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hester-joy-st-clair-10493/text18615, published first in hardcopy 1996, accessed online 10 August 2019.

• Joy Hester from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_Hester

• Joy Hester b. 1920 from the Design & Art Australia website at: https://www.daao.org.au/bio/joy-hester/

• Burke, Janine, 1980, Joy Hester (1920-1960), Australian Women Artists 1840-1940, Page 167-168, Greenhouse Publications Pty. Ltd. Collingwood, Victoria.

• Victorian Births, Deaths & marriages: Marriage Registration no. 2084 / 1941

• Victorian Births, Deaths & Marriages: Death Registration no. 34220 / 1960

• Burial information from the Last Resting Place for Australian Artists at: http://www.australianartistsgravesites.com

• On the Australian Cemeteries Index at: http://austcemindex.com/inscription?id=9817179

• On the Find a Grave website at: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/123942605/joy-st_claire-smith

• List: HESTER, Joy from TROVE at: https://trove.nla.gov.au/list?id=102885

• Joy St. Clair Hester Australia, 1920-60 from the Australian Art Sales Digest at: https://www.aasd.com.au/index.cfm/list-all-works/?concat=hesterjoy%20s&direction=0&order=1&start=151&show=50

• Joy St. Clair Hester (1920-60) Australia from the Australian Art Auctions Records website at: https://www.artrecord.com/index.cfm/artist/6939-hester-joy-st-clair/medium/2-works-on-paper/?io=1&page=5