Artist Jean Bellette (1908–1991) built her reputation on painting neoclassical figures in landscapes, for which she won the Sulman Prize twice, in 1942 and 1944. She also contributed illustrated articles to Art in Australia and taught at the East Sydney Technical College. In 1954, Bellette and her husband, artist and art critic Paul Haefliger, bought a cottage in Hill End, New South Wales, where they hosted many of their friends including Russell Drysdale, Margaret Olley and John Olsen. From 1957 onwards the couple lived in Mallorca, Spain, where she painted some of her finest works.
During the 1930s, artist, writer and critic Adrian Lawlor studied at George Bell’s school in Melbourne and in 1938, alongside modernists including Bell, Noel Counihan and Albert Tucker, formed the Contemporary Art Society. In 1939, two years after Lawlor painted this portrait of Bellette, more than 200 of his paintings were destroyed in a bushfire at his Warrandyte home, and he stopped painting. Subsequently, he became a critic for newspapers and journals, and presented a regular art show on ABC radio.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2009
© Estate of Adrian Lawlor
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Drawn from the National Portrait Gallery collection, this salon-style hang references the lavish 18th- and 19th-century European salons where paintings were hung floor-to-ceiling.
Eye to Eye is a summer Portrait Gallery Collection remix arranged by degree of eye contact – from turned away with eyes closed all the way through to right-back-at-you – as we explore artists’ and subjects’ choices around the direction of the gaze.
