Joy Hester's contribution to the development of modernism in Australia during World War II, and in the post-war period, is now widely recognised, and she is accepted as one of the major figures in this important transition period of Australian art history. Hester painted few oils; her primary achievement was in ink and watercolour drawings on paper. Nude woman c.1939–40 is the earliest example of Hester’s work in the Gallery’s Collection.
The inspiration for a group of early monumental nudes (of which Nude woman is a fine example) was Hester’s attendance at classes organised by the newly formed Contemporary Art Society at the George Bell School in Melbourne from 1939 to 1941.  Her life drawings from this time, show the influence of George Bell’s teaching. Although not one of his students, Bell’s influence dominated Melbourne of the period. His emphasis on the formal qualities of the European post-impressionists (particularly Cézanne) is evident in the blocky physicality of this work, and others by Hester from this time.(1)  
For many young artists like Hester their first chance to view contemporary European Art was the 1939 'Herald' Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art at the Melbourne Town Hall. Curator Deborah Hart in the National Gallery of Australia catalogue Joy Hester and friends (2001) noted that ‘by no means revolutionary in terms of contemporary developments, it did provide aspiring artists like Hester with the opportunity to see works by modernists such as Picasso, Braque and Georges Rouault first hand’.(2) Janine Burke in her book, Joy Hester (1983) expands on this influence stating ‘it was the statuesque women of his [Picasso’s] so-called Classic period that influenced the form of her nude studies’.(3)
The most striking feature of Nude woman and other figure drawings from this time is the enormous limbs of the figure contrasted with the small mask-like head. Hart comments on a similar work Nude study c.1939–41 that ‘the sculptural forms of the body find an echo in the surreal dimensions of Henry Moore’s work, but there are also striking parallels with drawings of distorted nudes by Bell’s student Peter Purves Smith’.(4) The Collection holds an example of Purves Smith’s nude drawings in Reclining nude c.1937. In comparison, Hester’s Nude woman is more heavily modelled with greater exaggeration of the limbs and body. This gives the work a strange asexual quality not unlike Michelangelo’s androgynous Sistine sibyls.(5)  
Hester is an important artist who was part of a significant period in Australian art history that centred around art patrons John and Sunday Reed, and included Albert Tucker, Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd and John Perceval. A highly innovative circle of painters known as the Angry Penguins, after the art and literary magazine of the same name published by John Reed and Max Harris. No exploration and display of work from this pivotal group is complete without a selection of Hester’s work.  Michael Hawker, former Curator, Australian Art, QAGOMA, March 2018.
Endnotes

1. Kelly Gellatly, Leave no space for yearning: The art of Joy Hester, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2001, p.13.
2. Deborah Hart, 'Joy Hester and friends'. NGA, Canberra, 2001, p.17.
3. Janine Burke, 'Joy Hester', Greenhouse Publications, Richmond, 1983, p.51.
4. Deborah Hart, ibid, p.18.
5. Janine Burke, ibid, p.50.