Joy Hester Paintings & Artwork for Sale | Joy Hester Art Value Price Guide

Oct. 10, 2023
JOY HESTER, TWO WOMEN, C.1941
Est: $10,000 - $15,000
JOY HESTER (1920 - 1960) TWO WOMEN, c.1941 pencil and ink on paper 37.0 x 31.5 cm (image) 70.5 x 53.0 cm (frame) PROVENANCE The Estate of Georges Mora, Melbourne Christie’s, Melbourne, 24 November 1992, lot 24 Private collection, Melbourne RELATED WORK Mexican Women, c.1941 – 3, brush and gouache, pencil on cardboard, 35.5 x 45.3 cm, Private collection, Melbourne © Joy Hester/Copyright Agency 2023 This work is located in our Melbourne Gallery
Deutscher and Hackett
Aug. 16, 2023
JOY HESTER, STREET SCENE II, C.1941
Est: $15,000 - $20,000
JOY HESTER (1920 - 1960) STREET SCENE II, c.1941 pen, ink and pencil on paper 20.0 x 24.5 cm (sheet) signed with estate stamp upper left: Joy Hester PROVENANCE The Estate of Sweeney Reed, Melbourne Peter Nahum, London Sotheby's, Melbourne, 27 September 1992, lot 212 Private collection, Melbourne LITERATURE Burke, J., Joy Hester, Greenhouse, Melbourne, 1983, p. 53 RELATED WORK Two Girls in the Street, c.1941, ink and pen and watercolour, 28.4 x 38.8 cm, in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra ESSAY 'Hester did a series of street scenes in the early Forties that have striking compositional similarities: usually of two women standing together in the street. She shared this interest in urban subjects with a number of her contemporaries - Albert Tucker, Sidney Nolan, Noel Counihan and Harry de Hartog. These artists had been influenced, in turn, by the Russian painter Danila Vassilieff and the Viennese-born Jewish artist Yosl Bergner. Both had arrived in Melbourne in 1937.' Excerpt from Burke, J., Joy Hester, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1981, p. 22 © Joy Hester/Copyright Agency 2023
Deutscher and Hackett
Jun. 27, 2023
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) (Portrait of a Girl) 1956 ink wash, pencil and charcoal on paper 34.5 x 25.5cm
Est: $12,000 - $16,000
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) (Portrait of a Girl) 1956 ink wash, pencil and charcoal on paper signed and dated lower right: Joy Hester. / 56 34.5 x 25.5cm PROVENANCE: The Collection of Sunday Reed The Collection of Frank Kellaway, acquired from the above Thence by descent Joel Fine Art, Melbourne 16 October 2006, lot 9 Private collection, Melbourne The Estate of the above OTHER NOTES: © Joy Hester/Copyright Agency, 2023
Leonard Joel
Mar. 29, 2023
JOY HESTER (1920-1960), Nude Leaning on a Chair c1943
Est: $15,000 - $20,000
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) Nude Leaning on a Chair c1943 oil on paper 28.0 x 24.0 cm
Menzies
Dec. 01, 2022
JOY HESTER, WOMAN AND ROSE, 1957
Est: $25,000 - $35,000
JOY HESTER (1920 - 1960) WOMAN AND ROSE, 1957 charcoal on paper on cardboard 62.0 x 48.0 cm signed and dated lower right: Joy Hester / ‘57 PROVENANCE Lauraine Diggins, Melbourne Sotheby’s, Melbourne, 26 November 1990, lot 5 Private collection Private collection, Canberra, acquired in 2002 EXHIBITED Moderns Exhibition, Lauraine Diggins, Melbourne, 20 June – 8 July 1983, cat. 36 (as ‘Portrait with Rose’, illus. in exhibition catalogue)
Deutscher and Hackett
Sep. 14, 2022
JOY HESTER, MOTHER AND CHILD, C.1950S
Est: $25,000 - $35,000
JOY HESTER (1920 - 1960) MOTHER AND CHILD, c.1950s watercolour, ink and gouache on card 51.0 x 41.0 cm signed upper right: Joy Hester PROVENANCE Private collection, Connecticut, USA Private collection, Florida, USA, acquired from the above in 2008 ESSAY Joy Hester was a central figure among the group of artists who gathered around John and Sunday Reed, the enlightened contemporary art patrons whose home, ‘Heide’, in the rural outer-Melbourne suburb of Heidelberg, offered ‘a vibrant intellectual environment and… haven of shared ideas’.1 A friend and respected peer of artists including Sidney Nolan and Albert Tucker (whom she married in 1941), Hester was a painter and poet whose work was often deeply personal, reflecting aspects of her own life, as well as describing experiences and emotions that are universal. Hester painted primarily on paper, using brush and ink, watercolour and gouache, and she had a facility with these media that allowed her to work in a manner that appeared spontaneous and intuitive. While this focus on drawing is often explained in terms of her gender and a lifelong lack of financial means, artist and writer, Deanna Petherbridge argues an alternative case, assigning conscious agency to Hester in her approach and choice of materials. ‘The more I think about Hester’s work, the more I am convinced that its insights, pathos and power flourished out of and because of the constraints of the domesticity and Bohemian poverty of her short life as a woman artist and mother, as well as her responses to the wider crises of her time. The very choice of drawing as her main medium and form of expression… and her often-recorded habit of sketching on the floor in company as a means of unself-conscious communication, signifies a deliberately alternative pathway.’2 Images of children and of mothers and children feature in Hester’s work of the mid-1950s, years which followed the birth of her son, Peregrine, in 1951, and daughter, Fern, three years later. Major works such as Girl with Hen, 1956 (National Gallery of Australia) and Two Girls in the Street, 1957 (National Gallery of Victoria) – ambitious in scale, finish and in their use of colour – depict the playfulness and innocence of childhood. In contrast, it is the intimacy of a mother’s bond with her baby that is the focus of works like Mother and Child, 1955 (National Gallery of Australia). Two large faces fill the sheet and, like Hester’s images of lovers where figures merge and blend into one, the mother and child are connected, but also retain their individuality. In this work, probably painted around the same time, there is a sense of separation, indicative perhaps of the age of the child, a toddler who is beginning to assert some independence. Characteristically, it combines loose, expressive brushstrokes, a striking use of colour – bolder than many of Hester’s works – and continues her familiar habit of depicting faces without noses.3 For Hester, ‘art existed as an equal in a democracy of love, friendship and children’4 and as this work depicts the profound relationship between mother and child, it also presents a poignant evocation of innocence and experience. 1. Gellatly, K., Leave no space for yearning: The Art of Joy Hester, exhibition catalogue, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2001, p. 12 2. Petherbridge, D., ‘The Haptic Eye/I’ in Joy Hester: Remember Me, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2020, p. 52 3. Ibid., pp. 76-79 4. Barrett Reid quoted in Gellatly, op. cit., p. 37 KIRSTY GRANT © Joy Hester/Copyright Agency 2022
Deutscher and Hackett
Jul. 27, 2022
JOY HESTER, FACES, C.1948
Est: $20,000 - $30,000
JOY HESTER (1920 - 1960) FACES, c.1948 from THE LOVERS series ink and pastel on paper 47.5 x 34.5 cm (sheet) signed with estate stamp lower left: Joy Hester PROVENANCE Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne Dr Ross Johnston, Brisbane, acquired from the above, by 1979 Christie’s, Melbourne, 1 May 2000, lot 165 The Cbus Collection of Australian Art, Melbourne, acquired from the above EXHIBITED A View of Brisbane Collections, Queensland Art Gallery Society, Brisbane, 9 – 25 March 1979 (label attached verso) Figurative Works from the Cbus Collection, Latrobe Regional Gallery, Victoria, 4 August – 2 December 2012 People are Strange, Latrobe Regional Gallery, Victoria, 28 November – 8 March 2015 Patricia Piccinini & Joy Hester: Through love …, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Victoria, 24 November 2018 – 11 March 2019 (label attached verso) Joy Hester: Remember Me, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 28 November 2020 – 14 February 2021, cat. 93 on long term loan to Latrobe Regional Gallery, Victoria LITERATURE Nainby, B., Stanhope, Z., and Furlonger, K., The Cbus Collection of Australian Art, in association with Latrobe Regional Gallery, Melbourne, 2009, pp. 15, 75 (illus.), 221 Morgan, K. and Petherbridge, D., Joy Hester: Remember Me, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2020, p. 153 (illus.) ESSAY The story of Joy Hester’s life is so complex and familiar that connections are inevitably made between what we know – or imagine we know – of her experiences and feelings, and the images she created. This is especially so of works which focus on the depiction of human relationships and emotion. The dual themes of love and lovers are persistent throughout her oeuvre, but especially from 1947, a year which marked the end of her marriage to Albert Tucker and the beginning of a new relationship with the poet/painter, Gray Smith. In this work from around 1948, Hester depicts the faces of two figures, painting them quickly in broad brushstrokes of black ink and wash. They read as opposites: one female and one male, one that is pale in colour, and one that is dark. While the female looks out at the viewer, a hint of a smile on her face, her partner’s gaze is focussed firmly on her. The overlapping of their faces signals an intimate connection which is reinforced by the presence of a rose, a traditional symbol of romantic love. Indeed, these faces appear to be enclosed within a heart-shaped (although incomplete) outline, a motif Hester used in other works including two closely related examples which share the same title and date, Love (Heart group), c.1949 (National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and Gallery at HOTA, Queensland). Although Hester’s work was unrepresented in any public collection at the time of her premature death in 1960, it is now widely collected, with major holdings in the National Gallery of Australia and Heide Museum of Modern Art. Her art has been the subject of several major posthumous exhibitions and notably, this work was included in the most recent of these, Joy Hester: Remember Me, shown at Heide during 2020.1 1. See Morgan. K. & Petherbridge, D., Joy Hester: Remember Me, exhibition catalogue, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen, 2020, cat. no. 93, illustrated p. 153 KIRSTY GRANT © Joy Hester/Copyright Agency 2022
Deutscher and Hackett
Jun. 29, 2022
JOY HESTER (1920-1960), Man in Chair
Est: $12,000 - $16,000
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) Man in Chair ink on paper 49.5 x 39.5 cm artist's estate stamp lower right
Menzies
Jun. 29, 2022
JOY HESTER (1920-1960), Man
Est: $8,000 - $12,000
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) Man ink on paper 24.5 x 19.0 cm artist's estate stamp lower right
Menzies
Jun. 29, 2022
JOY HESTER (1920-1960), Woman
Est: $4,000 - $6,000
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) Woman ink on paper 23.0 x 19.0 cm artist's estate stamp upper left
Menzies
Apr. 12, 2022
JOY HESTER 1920-1960 Head of a Woman (1944) oil on plywood
Est: $60,000 - $80,000
JOY HESTER 1920-1960 Head of a Woman (1944) oil on plywood 40 x 27.7 cm PROVENANCE Joy Hester, Melbourne Albert Tucker, Melbourne, acquired from the above Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne Private Collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above LITERATURE Janine Burke, Joy Hester, Greenhouse Publications, Melbourne, 1983, pp. 75, 79 (illustrated)
Smith & Singer
Mar. 22, 2022
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) Man with Beard 1955 ink on paper
Est: $15,000 - $20,000
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) Man with Beard 1955 ink on paper signed and dated lower left: Joy Hester/ 1955 75.5 x 50.5cm PROVENANCE: Private collection, Melbourne Thence by descent OTHER NOTES: In 1955, Joy Hester was invited by Georges and Mirka Mora to show at Mirka Cafe, 183 Exhibition Street, the French-style eatery the Moras had opened the previous year in Melbourne's theatre district. After arriving from Paris in 1951, the Moras, who lived nearby at 9 Collins Street, were transforming the culture of their new home with sophistication, conviviality and considerable Gallic charm. Hester and Gray Smith, her partner, were good friends and had babysat their young sons, Philippe and William, on a weekly basis at their home in Upwey in the Dandenong Ranges while the Moras ran the cafe. 1955 was a busy, productive year for Hester. She increased the scale of her brush and ink works and, for the first time, regularly signed and dated them, marking a new level of professionalism. The Mirka Cafe show was the second of only three solo exhibitions during Hester's lifetime. (1) As there was no catalogue, the inclusion of Man with Beard cannot be confirmed. That year Hester also contributed to two Contemporary Art Society group exhibitions and The Herald Outdoor Art Show. However, Head of a Woman in Hat (1955, National Gallery of Victoria), which was in the Mirka Cafe show, has the same dimensions. Also for the first time, Hester won (faint) praise from the critics. Alan McCulloch described her solo show as 'striking in its originality, somewhat bizarre in general feeling and resembling in effect - if we exclude the Expressionist element - the negative print in photography'. (2) Arnold Shore noted the 'looming intensity' of the wash drawings whose 'emotional nature' was accentuated by 'an individual interpretation of character'. (3) Though Hester was living in the township of Upwey, the impact of the Australian bush and of country people had informed her vision since moving to rural Hurstbridge in 1948. She was enamoured of the land and its people, avidly reading Australian history and poetry. Nature also provided a healing retreat as Hester recovered from Hodgkin's disease. Who is Man with Beard? Could he be a 19th century bushranger? The few remaining photographs of Ned Kelly prove it's not him. There's a passing resemblance to Francis McCallum (1822-1857), known as Captain Melville, though he sported a moustache. Hester occasionally drew portraits and rarely concentrated on landscape. She was concerned with issues more evanescent and symbolic: the human face as repository for issues of identity where nothing is fixed, all is in transition. Man with Beard is a striking image: a strong, sensitive face with eyes that are piercing yet blank, and a sensuous mouth. He seems to look at us yet looks past us, his beard like dark water, dissolving his face. He is an apparition, a ghostly visitation from the colonial past. Dr Janine Burke, Honorary Senior Fellow, University of Melbourne. 1. Hester's other solo exhibitions were at Melbourne Bookclub Gallery, 225 Collins Street, Melbourne, 6-17 February, 1950 and Gallery of Contemporary Art, Tavistock Place, Melbourne 9-23 April 1957. 2. Alan McCulloch, The Herald, 27 July 1955, p.20. 3. Arnold Shore, The Argus, 27 July 1955, p.8. © Joy Hester/Copyright Agency 2022
Leonard Joel
Dec. 01, 2021
JOY HESTER (1920-1960), The Greek c1945
Est: $8,000 - $12,000
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) The Greek c1945 oil on board 38.5 x 27.0 cm bears inscription verso: to J. Reed/ Templestowe Rd/ Heidleburg [sic] artist's estate stamp lower right
Menzies
Nov. 10, 2021
JOY HESTER, LOVERS WITH ROSE, c.1950
Est: $35,000 - $45,000
JOY HESTER (1920 - 1960) LOVERS WITH ROSE, c.1950 watercolour, pastel, brush and Chinese ink on paper on card 54.0 x 36.5 cm signed with estate stamp lower left PROVENANCE Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne (label attached verso) Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above in 1976 EXHIBITED Joy Hester, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, 6 – 25 October 1976, cat. 91 (as ‘Lovers, c.1950’) Joy Hester: Remember Me, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 28 November 2020 – 14 February 2021, cat. 111 (as 'Lovers with Rose, c.1950', illus. in exhibition catalogue) LITERATURE Morgan, K and Petherbridge, D., Joy Hester: Remember Me, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2020, p. 155 (illus.) RELATED WORK (The Embrace) from the Love Series I, c. 1949, chalk, ink and wash on paper on board, 38.0 x 27.0 cm, in the collection of The University of Western Australia Art, Perth ESSAY Although Joy Hester’s art was neither strictly diaristic or autobiographical, the story of her life is so complex and familiar that connections are inevitably made between what we know (or imagine we know) of her experiences and feelings, and the images she created. This is especially so of images which focus, in Hester’s characteristically direct and psychologically charged style, on the depiction of human relationships and the expression of emotion. The theme of love is persistent in much of her work, but especially from 1947, a year which marked the beginning of a particularly turbulent period in Hester’s life. Diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease, her marriage to Albert Tucker ended and two years later her son, Sweeney, was formally adopted by John and Sunday Reed. It was a new relationship with the poet/painter, Gray Smith (also begun in 1947) which would sustain her emotionally and artistically until the end of her life, providing the backdrop to the well-known images of lovers produced during the late 1940s and 1950s. The head and torso of a naked male figure fills the sheet in Lovers with Rose, c.1950, his striking blue eyes staring directly out at the viewer. Slightly askew, they are the only facial features depicted, compelling and with an intensity that recalls the piercing eyes in contemporary paintings by Sidney Nolan – Hester’s friend and one of the avant-garde artists who gathered around John and Sunday Reed at Heide. His lover is out of view, but her long hair trails over his left shoulder, and opposite, her arm hangs languidly across his chest, delicate fingers seemingly pointing to the pale pink rose. Itself a symbol of love, the rose in this work is said to relate to a floral motif that Hester later designed for Sunday Reed, which was etched into the glass panels either side of the front door at Heide and remain today. In the renovation of the Reed’s farmhouse undertaken during the early 1950s, the rose also featured in the decorative wallpaper Sunday chose for the master bedroom and in Nolan’s painting¸ Rosa Mutabilis, 1945 (Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne) – a memento of her love affair with the young artist – which she displayed there,1 as well as various living specimens that grew in the garden. Unlike her male peers, who produced their major works in oil paint, Hester worked predominantly in ink and watercolour, and the lower status of these media in the fine art hierarchy is one of the reasons why her work was so little known and appreciated during her lifetime. Although Hester’s work was unrepresented in any public collection at the time of her premature death in 1960, it is now widely collected, with major holdings in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne. This work was included in the recent major exhibition, Joy Hester: Remember Me, shown at Heide during 2020.2 Hester’s distinctive way of depicting the human figure, combined with the immediacy of her chosen medium, results in a remarkable sense of intimacy that seems to transcend the inevitable distance between the artist, the artwork and the viewer. For Hester, art was a means of self-expression and communication – ‘[she] drew the way other people speak: it was as natural and as simple as that’.3 1. See Harding, L. & Morgan, K., Modern Love: The Lives of John & Sunday Reed, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2015, pp. 241 – 242 2. See Morgan. K. & Petherbridge, D., Joy Hester: Remember Me, exhibition catalogue, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2020, cat. 111, p. 155 (illus.) 3. Barrett Reid quoted in Gellatly, K., Leave no space for yearning: The Art of Joy Hester, exhibition catalogue, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2001, p. 14 KIRSTY GRANT © Joy Hester/Copyright Agency 2021
Deutscher and Hackett
Oct. 19, 2021
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) Man with Beard 1955 ink on paper
Est: $20,000 - $30,000
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) Man with Beard 1955 ink on paper signed and dated lower left: Joy Hester/ 1955 75.5 x 50.5cm PROVENANCE: Private collection, Melbourne Thence by descent OTHER NOTES: In 1955, Joy Hester was invited by Georges and Mirka Mora to show at Mirka Cafe, 183 Exhibition Street, the French-style eatery the Moras had opened the previous year in Melbourne's theatre district. After arriving from Paris in 1951, the Moras, who lived nearby at 9 Collins Street, were transforming the culture of their new home with sophistication, conviviality and considerable Gallic charm. Hester and Gray Smith, her partner, were good friends and had babysat their young sons, Philippe and William, on a weekly basis at their home in Upwey in the Dandenong Ranges while the Moras ran the cafe. 1955 was a busy, productive year for Hester. She increased the scale of her brush and ink works and, for the first time, regularly signed and dated them, marking a new level of professionalism. The Mirka Cafe show was the second of only three solo exhibitions during Hester's lifetime. (1) As there was no catalogue, the inclusion of Man with Beard cannot be confirmed. That year Hester also contributed to two Contemporary Art Society group exhibitions and The Herald Outdoor Art Show. However, Head of a Woman in Hat (1955, National Gallery of Victoria), which was in the Mirka Cafe show, has the same dimensions. Also for the first time, Hester won (faint) praise from the critics. Alan McCulloch described her solo show as 'striking in its originality, somewhat bizarre in general feeling and resembling in effect - if we exclude the Expressionist element - the negative print in photography'. (2) Arnold Shore noted the 'looming intensity' of the wash drawings whose 'emotional nature' was accentuated by 'an individual interpretation of character'. (3) Though Hester was living in the township of Upwey, the impact of the Australian bush and of country people had informed her vision since moving to rural Hurstbridge in 1948. She was enamoured of the land and its people, avidly reading Australian history and poetry. Nature also provided a healing retreat as Hester recovered from Hodgkin's disease. Who is Man with Beard? Could he be a 19th century bushranger? The few remaining photographs of Ned Kelly prove it's not him. There's a passing resemblance to Francis McCallum (1822-1857), known as Captain Melville, though he sported a moustache. Hester occasionally drew portraits and rarely concentrated on landscape. She was concerned with issues more evanescent and symbolic: the human face as repository for issues of identity where nothing is fixed, all is in transition. Man with Beard is a striking image: a strong, sensitive face with eyes that are piercing yet blank, and a sensuous mouth. He seems to look at us yet looks past us, his beard like dark water, dissolving his face. He is an apparition, a ghostly visitation from the colonial past. Dr Janine Burke, Honorary Senior Fellow, University of Melbourne. 1. Hester's other solo exhibitions were at Melbourne Bookclub Gallery, 225 Collins Street, Melbourne, 6-17 February, 1950 and Gallery of Contemporary Art, Tavistock Place, Melbourne 9-23 April 1957. 2. Alan McCulloch, The Herald, 27 July 1955, p.20. 3. Arnold Shore, The Argus, 27 July 1955, p.8.
Leonard Joel
Jul. 29, 2021
JOY HESTER (1920 - 1960) The Witch, 1943 ink and charcoal on paper 51 x 36 cm (frame: 68 x 53 x 4 cm) signed lower right
Est: $1,500 - $2,500
JOY HESTER (1920 - 1960) The Witch, 1943 ink and charcoal on paper 51 x 36 cm (frame: 68 x 53 x 4 cm) signed lower right
Lawsons
Jun. 30, 2021
JOY HESTER (1920-1960), Face 1947-48
Est: $9,000 - $12,000
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) Face 1947-48 ink and watercolour on paper 26.0 x 36.5 cm artist's estate stamp lower right
Menzies
Apr. 29, 2021
JOY HESTER (1920 - 1960) - Portrait 32.5 x 24.5 cm (frame: 51 x 45 x 2 cm)
Est: $2,000 - $3,000
JOY HESTER (1920 - 1960) Portrait ink and wash 32.5 x 24.5 cm (frame: 51 x 45 x 2 cm) signed lower right
Lawsons
Mar. 31, 2021
JOY HESTER (1920-1960), Untitled (Child with Hat and Scarf), c1955
Est: $30,000 - $40,000
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) Untitled (Child with Hat and Scarf) c1955 brush and ink, watercolour on paper 42.0 x 35.0 cm artist's estate stamp lower left
Menzies
Mar. 30, 2021
JOY HESTER, NUDE (FROM AN INCREDIBLE NIGHT DREAM) c. 1946-47
Est: $4,000 - $6,000
JOY HESTER (1920 – 1960) NUDE (FROM AN INCREDIBLE NIGHT DREAM) c. 1946-47 brush and ink on paper 25.0 x 31.5 cm 49.0 x 63.5 cm (frame) signed with artist’s stamp upper left PROVENANCE Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne (label attached verso) Ray Hughes, Sydney The Estate of Ray Hughes, Sydney This item is located at our Sydney Gallery © Joy Hester/Copyright Agency, 2021
Deutscher and Hackett
Nov. 19, 2020
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) Untitled (Child and Doll) c1948
Est: $7,000 - $10,000
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) Untitled (Child and Doll) c1948 ink and wash on paper 27.0 x 25.0 cm bears inscription verso: JOY HESTER artist's estate stamp upper left
Menzies
Jul. 09, 2020
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) Prisoner No.119970 c1945
Est: $6,000 - $10,000
JOY HESTER (1920-1960), Prisoner No.119970 c1945 ink and wash on paper 27.5 x 21.5 cm artist's estate stamp lower left
Menzies
Mar. 26, 2020
Joy Hester (1920 - 1960) - The Witch, 1943 51 x 36 cm
Est: $4,000 - $6,000
Joy Hester (1920 - 1960) The Witch, 1943 ink and charcoal on paper 51 x 36 cm signed lower right
Lawsons
Feb. 27, 2020
JOY HESTER (1920-1960), At Rest
Est: $3,000 - $4,000
JOY HESTER (1920-1960), At Rest ink on paper 31.5 x 20.0 cm inscribed verso: 36 artist's estate stamp lower left label attached verso with title
Menzies
Feb. 27, 2020
Joy Hester (1920 - 1960) - The Witch, 1943 51 x 36 cm
Est: $5,000 - $7,000
Joy Hester (1920 - 1960) The Witch, 1943 ink and charcoal on paper 51 x 36 cm signed lower right
Lawsons
Nov. 27, 2019
JOY HESTER, (1920 – 1960), LOVERS WITH ROSE, c.1947, watercolour, pastel, brush and Chinese ink on paper on card
Est: $35,000 - $45,000
JOY HESTER (1920 – 1960) LOVERS WITH ROSE, c.1947 watercolour, pastel, brush and Chinese ink on paper on card SIGNED: signed with estate stamp lower left DIMENSIONS: 54.0 x 36.5 cm PROVENANCE: Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne (label attached verso) Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above in 1976 EXHIBITED: Joy Hester, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, 6 – 25 October 1976, cat. 91 (as ‘Lovers, c.1950’) ESSAY: Although Joy Hester’s art was neither strictly diaristic or autobiographical, the story of her life is so complex and familiar that connections are inevitably made between what we know (or imagine we know) of her experiences and feelings, and the images she created. This is especially so of images which focus, in Hester’s characteristically direct and psychologically charged style, on the depiction of human relationships and the expression of emotion. The theme of love is persistent in much of her work, but especially from 1947, a year which marked the beginning of a particularly turbulent period in Hester’s life. Diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease, her marriage to Albert Tucker ended and two years later her son, Sweeney, was formally adopted by John and Sunday Reed. It was a new relationship with the poet/painter, Gray Smith, also begun in 1947, which would sustain her emotionally and artistically until the end of her life, that provided the backdrop to the well-known images of lovers produced during the late 1940s and mid-1950s. The head and torso of a naked male figure fills the sheet in Lovers with Rose, c.1947, his striking blue eyes staring directly out at the viewer. Slightly askew, they are the only facial feature depicted, compelling and with an intensity that recalls the piercing eyes in contemporary paintings by Sidney Nolan – Hester’s friend and one of the avant-garde artists who gathered around John and Sunday Reed at Heide. His lover is out of view, but her long hair trails over his left shoulder, and opposite, her arm hangs languidly across his chest, delicate fingers seemingly pointing to the pale pink rose. Itself a symbol of love, the rose in this work is said to relate to a floral motif that Hester later designed for Sunday Reed, which was etched into the glass panels either side of the front door at Heide. In the renovation of the Reed’s farmhouse undertaken in the early 1950s, the rose also featured in the decorative wallpaper Sunday chose for the master bedroom and in Nolan’s painting¸ Rosa Mutabilis, 1945 (Heide Museum of Modern Art) – a memento of her love affair with the young artist – which she displayed there,1 as well as various living specimens that grew in the garden. Unlike her male peers, who produced their major works in oil paint, Hester worked predominantly in ink and watercolour, and the lower status of these media in the fine art hierarchy is one of the reasons why her work was so little known and appreciated during her lifetime. Although Hester’s work was unrepresented in any public collection at the time of her premature death in 1960, it is now widely collected, with major holdings in the National Gallery of Australia and Heide Museum of Modern Art. Hester’s distinctive way of depicting the human figure, combined with the immediacy of her chosen medium, results in a remarkable sense of intimacy that seems to transcend the inevitable distance between the artist, their artwork and the viewer. For Hester, art was a means of self-expression and communication – ‘[she] drew the way other people speak: it was as natural and as simple as that’.2 1. See Harding, L. & Morgan, K., Modern Love: The Lives of John & Sunday Reed, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2015, pp. 241 – 242 2. Barrett Reid quoted in Gellatly, K., Leave no space for yearning: The Art of Joy Hester, exhibition catalogue, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Victoria, 2001, p. 14 KIRSTY GRANT
Deutscher and Hackett
Nov. 27, 2019
JOY HESTER, (1920 – 1960), DOLL IN GREEN DRESS, c.1947 – 48, brush and ink, and watercolour on paper
Est: $30,000 - $40,000
JOY HESTER, (1920 – 1960) DOLL IN GREEN DRESS, c.1947 – 48 brush and ink and watercolour on paper SIGNED: signed with estate stamp lower right: Joy Hester DIMENSIONS: 29.5 x 24.5 cm PROVENANCE: Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne (label attached verso) Private collection Niagara Galleries, Melbourne Private collection, Sydney EXHIBITED: Joy Hester, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, 6 – 25 October 1976, cat. 30 (as ‘Doll in Green Dress (Sydney Period)’) Blue Chip III, Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, 27 February – 31 March 2001, cat. 3 (illus. in exhibition catalogue, p.5 and back cover) ESSAY: Joy Hester was a central figure among the group of artists who gathered around John and Sunday Reed, the enlightened patrons whose home, ‘Heide’, in the rural outer-Melbourne suburb of Heidelberg, offered ‘a vibrant intellectual environment and … haven of shared ideas’.1 A friend and respected peer of artists including Sidney Nolan and Albert Tucker (whom she married in 1941), Hester was a painter and poet whose work was often deeply personal, reflecting aspects of her own life and experience, as well as describing broader human psychology and universally-felt emotions. Hester’s art is distinguished from that of her male counterparts in that she worked almost exclusively on paper, using brush and ink, watercolour and gouache. While her constant financial difficulty surely influenced this, Hester had a particular facility with these media. Responding to their immediacy, she produced images which appear both spontaneous and intuitive, with a fluidity and lightness of touch that is difficult to achieve in oil paint. Barrett Reid recalled, ‘Joy drew the way other people speak; it was as natural and as simple as that … She worked wherever she happened to be and she happened to be largely amongst people. I can see her now, in this room (the library at Heide) … She’d squat down there, probably smoking cigarettes ten to the dozen, and yapping away like mad. And in front of her would be a whole pile of paper which she’d be drawing on and taking part in the conversation laughing, interrupting, listening intently to what everyone was saying and drawing at the same time’.2 Doll in Green Dress, c.1947 – 48 is an unusual subject within Hester’s oeuvre, and with its sparkling eyes and realistically drawn face, notably different from the expressive and exaggerated features of most of her figures. While the doll’s yellow bonnet has been likened to the stark abstract form of Sidney Nolan’s famous Boy and the Moon, c.1939 – 40 (National Gallery of Australia, Canberra)3, this image is most likely connected to the series of images of Gethsemane – a doll that belonged to Sunday Reed – which Hester painted between 1946 – 47. Following their first meeting at the Herald exhibition of French and British Art in Melbourne in 1939, Hester and Sunday established a lifelong friendship which was as complex as it was steadfast, including an intimate romantic liaison and the Reeds’ adoption of Hester’s son Sweeney in 1949.4 Handmade from linen and filled with lavender from the Heide garden, the faceless Gethsemane represented the children that Sunday was unable to bear and assumed a strong and symbolic presence in her life, familiar to visitors to Heide and featuring in her correspondence with Hester as if she was a real child. While some of Hester’s depictions of ‘Gethie’ (in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia and Heide Museum of Modern Art, Victoria for example), are full of the tragedy of Sunday’s childlessness, others are more optimistic, the prominent eyes a symbol, instead, of the delight and wonder of childhood. It is this sense which Doll in Green Dress reflects, indicative perhaps of the relative stability and happiness of Hester’s life from 1947, when she began a relationship with Gray Smith, with whom she would later have two of her own children. 1. Gellatly, K., Leave no space for yearning: The Art of Joy Hester, exhibition catalogue, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2001, p. 12 2. Reid, B. quoted in Gellatly, K., ibid., p. 14 3. Blue Chip III, exhibition catalogue, Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, 2001, cat. 3 4. See Harding, L. & Morgan, K., Modern Love: The Lives of John & Sunday Reed, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2015 KIRSTY GRANT
Deutscher and Hackett
Oct. 23, 2019
JOY HESTER 1920-1960 Woman Resting 1943 ink on paper 23.9 x 30.1 cm
Est: $6,000 - $9,000
JOY HESTER 1920-1960 Woman Resting 1943 ink on paper signed and dated 'Joy Hester / Jan 1943' upper right 23.9 x 30.1 cm PROVENANCE Niagara Galleries, Melbourne Mrs Rae Rothfield, Melbourne, acquired from the above on 25 February 1997 EXHIBITED Joy Hester: Watercolours & Drawings of the Forties, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, 30 April-24 May 1986, no. 25 Australian Drawing 1940-96, Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, no. 5 This work has been requested by Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, for inclusion in the following exhibition, Joy Hester: Remember Me, 21 March-14 June 2020
Smith & Singer
Jun. 25, 2019
JOY HESTER, THE COUPLE, 1945
Est: $8,000 - $12,000
JOY HESTER (1920 – 1960) THE COUPLE, 1945 ink and wash on paper SIGNED: signed and dated upper left: Joy Hester ’45 DIMENSIONS: 31.0 x 19.5 cm PROVENANCE: Private collection, Adelaide Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 2006
Deutscher and Hackett
Oct. 10, 2018
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) Girl and Tea Cup ink on paper
Est: $3,000 - $5,000
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) Girl and Tea Cup ink on paper artist's stamp lower right titled on label verso 24.5 x 19.5 cm PROVENANCE: Eva Breuer Art Dealer, Sydney (label verso) Private collection, Melbourne
Leonard Joel
Oct. 10, 2018
§ JOY HESTER (1920-1960) Face c.1948 brush and ink wash on paper
Est: $9,000 - $12,000
§ JOY HESTER (1920-1960) Face c.1948 brush and ink wash on paper artist's stamp upper left 23.5 x 30cm PROVENANCE: The Georges Mora Collection, Melbourne Bonhams, Sydney, 21 November 2011, lot 15 Private collection, Sydney
Leonard Joel
Aug. 28, 2018
JOY HESTER 1920-1960 Face (1948) gouache, brush and ink on paper 24 x 30.5 cm
Est: $15,000 - $25,000
JOY HESTER 1920-1960 Face (1948) gouache, brush and ink on paper signed with estate stamp 'Joy Hester' lower left 24 x 30.5 cm PROVENANCE Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne Private Collection, Melbourne EXHIBITED Joy Hester, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, 6-25 October 1976, no. 37
Smith & Singer
Aug. 28, 2018
JOY HESTER 1920-1960 Self Portrait (1948) gouache, brush and ink on paper 30.5 x 24 cm
Est: $20,000 - $30,000
JOY HESTER 1920-1960 Self Portrait (1948) gouache, brush and ink on paper inscribed 'Self Portrait' lower left; signed with estate stamp 'Joy Hester' lower right 30.5 x 24 cm PROVENANCE Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne Private Collection, Melbourne EXHIBITED Joy Hester, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, 6-25 October 1976, no. 9, 'Face'
Smith & Singer
Jun. 05, 2018
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) Girl with Cocky c.1957 oil on paper on board
Est: $90,000 - $120,000
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) Girl with Cocky c.1957 oil on paper on board unsigned titled and dated on Strines Gallery label (attached verso) handwritten certification of painting by Albert Tucker, 1986 on second label (attached verso) 49 x 62cm PROVENANCE: Strines Gallery, Melbourne, 25 March 1967 (accompanied by original gallery invoice and receipt) Wivine and Roger De Stoop, Melbourne Thence by descent
Leonard Joel
Nov. 30, 2017
JOY HESTER (1920-1960), Love Series 1949
Est: $18,000 - $24,000
JOY HESTER (1920-1960), Love Series 1949 JOY HESTER (1920-1960), Love Series 1949 Chinese ink and pastel on paper, 30.0 x 25.0 cm artist's estate stamp upper left, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne (label attached verso) Private collection, Melbourne, since 1976 Joy Hester: 1920 - 1960, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, 6 - 26 October 1976, no.49 Modern Australian Painting, Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne, 12 April - 5 May 2012, cat.62 (illus. exhibition catalogue)
Menzies
Nov. 29, 2017
JOY HESTER, (1920 – 1960), OLD WOMAN, 1955, brush and ink, and blue crayon on paper
Est: $80,000 - $120,000
JOY HESTER, (1920 – 1960), OLD WOMAN, 1955, brush and ink, and blue crayon on paper SIGNED: signed and dated lower right: Joy Hester ‘55 DIMENSIONS: 74.0 x 54.5 cm PROVENANCE: Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne (label attached verso) Private collection, Melbourne EXHIBITED: Possibly Mirka Café, Melbourne, July 1955 Probably Joy Hester, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, 6 – 25 October 1976 Leave No Space for Yearning: The Art of Joy Hester, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 25 August – 11 November 2001 LITERATURE: Gellatly, K., Leave No Space for Yearning: The Art of Joy Hester, exhibition catalogue, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2001, p. 51 RELATED WORK: Head of a Woman with Hat, 1955, brush and ink, and blue crayon, 75.4 × 50.4 cm, in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, illus. in Burke, J., Joy Hester, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1981, pp. 44 – 45 ESSAY: Alongside Sidney Nolan and Albert Tucker, Joy Hester was a central figure among the group of artists who gathered around John and Sunday Reed at Heide. The Reeds were enlightened patrons of contemporary art, providing financial, moral and emotional support to these young artists in whom they identified great promise, and their home in the rural outer-Melbourne suburb of Heidelberg became a hub for many of the most avant-garde artists, writers and thinkers of the day, ‘a vibrant intellectual environment and … haven of shared ideas … a source of fresh produce in wartime, and an invaluable collection of books and journals’.1 Following their first meeting at the Herald exhibition of French and British Art in 1939, Hester and Sunday Reed established a lifelong friendship which was as complex as it was steadfast, including an intimate romantic liaison and the Reeds’ adoption of Hester’s son Sweeney in 1949.2 Hester painted predominantly on paper, using brush and ink, watercolour and gouache, and had a facility with these media that allowed her to work in a manner that appeared both spontaneous and intuitive. As Barrett Reid recalled, ‘Joy drew the way other people speak; it was as natural and as simple as that … I can see her now, in this room (the library at Heide) … in front of her would be a whole pile of paper which she’d be drawing on and taking part in the conversation laughing, interrupting, listening intently to what everyone was saying and drawing at the same time’.3 Following the tumultuous events of the late 1940s – including the end of her marriage to Albert Tucker, Sweeney’s adoption and Hester’s diagnosis with Hodgkin’s disease – the early 1950s represented a period of relative contentment. By 1955 she was living in rural Avonsleigh with the poet/painter, Gray Smith, and their two young children and despite a constant lack of money, it was a happy and artistically productive time. Charles and Barbara Blackman lived nearby, co-conspirators in variously successful money-making ventures, as well as creative compatriots. Led in part by Hester’s example, Charles Blackman worked exclusively on paper while at Avonsleigh and in turn, he encouraged Hester to use process black, a dense black ink used by commercial printers, to make her work ‘sterner’. 4 Old Woman, 1955 is part of an informal group of works Hester made during these years that depict the down-to-earth, country people she encountered at Avonsleigh and Upwey, where the family moved later that year. Hester’s maturity and growing confidence as an artist is reflected in these drawings including Woman, 1955 (TarraWarra Museum of Art, Victoria) and Man in cork hat, 1957 (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne), which are more ambitious in their level of detail and finish, as well as larger in scale than much earlier work. The subject and
Deutscher and Hackett
Oct. 29, 2017
JOY St CLAIR HESTER 1920-1960 SEATED NUDE charcoal and pastel 35x 25c
Est: -
JOY St CLAIR HESTER 1920-1960 SEATED NUDE charcoal and pastel 35x 25cms Signed lower right dated 56 BY FAR THE MAJORITY OF HESTERS WORKS DEPICT FEMALES EITHER DOMESTICALLY OR PORTRAITS. THEY APPEAR ON THE MARKET RARELY. THIS WORK TITLED SEATED NUDE MIXED MEDIA WAS SOLD BY CHRISTIES SYDNEY 23/9/1985 AS LOT 576
Christian McCann Auctions
Mar. 15, 2017
JOY HESTER, (1920 1960), HOUSE, c.1944 45, brush and ink on paper
Est: $1,500 - $2,500
JOY HESTER, (1920 1960), HOUSE, c.1944 45, brush and ink on paper SIGNED: signed lower right with estate stamp DIMENSIONS: 32.0 x 49.0 cm sight PROVENANCE: Sweeney Reed, Melbourne Thence by descent The Reed Family Collection, Victoria Gould collection, Melbourne EXHIBITED: Joy Hester: Works from the Reed Family Collection, Gould Galleries, Melbourne, 27 April 22 May 2005, and Gould Galleries, Sydney, 1 26 June 2005, cat. 24 (illus. in exhibition catalogue)
Deutscher and Hackett
Mar. 15, 2017
JOY HESTER , (1920 1960), WOMAN IN THE SHOWER, c.1945, brush and ink on paper
Est: $6,000 - $9,000
JOY HESTER , (1920 1960), WOMAN IN THE SHOWER, c.1945, brush and ink on paper SIGNED: inscribed lower right with estate stamp DIMENSIONS: 49.5 x 40.0 cm sight PROVENANCE: Sweeney Reed, Melbourne Thence by descent The Reed Family Collection, Victoria Gould collection, Melbourne EXHIBITED: Joy Hester: Works from the Reed Family Collection, Gould Galleries, Melbourne, 27 April 22 May 2005, and Gould Galleries, Sydney, 1 26 June 2005, cat. 21 (illus. in exhibition catalogue)
Deutscher and Hackett
Oct. 25, 2016
JOY HESTER 1920-1960 Female Nude (circa 1945) brush and ink on paper
Est: $4,000 - $6,000
JOY HESTER 1920-1960 Female Nude (circa 1945) brush and ink on paper signed with estate stamp 'Joy Hester' lower right 24.5 x 31 cm PROVENANCE The Reed Family Collection, Melbourne Gould Galleries, Melbourne Private Collection, Melbourne acquired from the above in 2005 EXHIBITED Joy Hester: Works from the Reed Family Collection, Gould Galleries, Melbourne, 27 April - 22 May 2005, no. 7, illustrated
Smith & Singer
Sep. 21, 2016
JOY HESTER (1920-1960), The Accepted Life of Birds c1945
Est: $7,000 - $9,000
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) The Accepted Life of Birds c1945, ink and wash on paper, 24.5 x 19.5 cm inscribed centre left: The accepted life of birds stamped lower left with estate signature
Menzies
Jul. 19, 2016
JOY HESTER 1920-1960 Figure of a Girl watercolour on paper
Est: $6,000 - $8,000
JOY HESTER 1920-1960 Figure of a Girl watercolour on paper 25 x 28.4 cm PROVENANCE Savill Galleries, Sydney Private Collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above in 1998
Smith & Singer
Nov. 30, 2015
Joy Hester (1920-1960) - Gossip, c. 1940
Est: $5,000 - $7,000
Joy Hester (1920-1960) Gossip, c. 1940 watercolour on paper, artist's stamp l.r.c 'Joy Hester' 19 x 13 cm
Shapiro Auctioneers
Sep. 27, 2015
JAY HESTER (20TH CENTURY) A PAINTING, "Mina's New Moccasins,"
Est: $400 - $600
JAY HESTER (20TH CENTURY) A PAINTING, "Mina's New Moccasins," oil on canvas, signed L/R. 13 1/2" x 17 1/2"
Houston Auction Company
Aug. 19, 2015
Joy Hester (1920-1960)
Est: $8,000 - $12,000
Joy Hester (1920-1960) Of War, c. 1945 brush and ink on paper, artist's stamp l.r.c 'Joy Hester'
Shapiro Auctioneers
Aug. 19, 2015
Joy Hester (1920-1960)
Est: $5,000 - $7,000
Joy Hester (1920-1960) Gossip, c. 1940 watercolour on paper, artist's stamp l.r.c 'Joy Hester'
Shapiro Auctioneers
Jul. 19, 2015
JAY HESTER (20TH CENTURY) A PAINTING, "Mina's New Moccasins,"
Est: $400 - $600
JAY HESTER (20TH CENTURY) A PAINTING, "Mina's New Moccasins," oil on canvas, signed L/R. 13 1/2" x 17 1/2"
Houston Auction Company
Jun. 25, 2015
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) Woman at Handrail 1945
Est: $5,000 - $7,000
JOY HESTER (1920-1960) Woman at Handrail 1945 ink and wash on paper 35.5 x 26.5 cm artist's stamp lower right
Menzies