Jean Bellette (1908–1991), painter, studied in her native Hobart before moving to Sydney to train with Julian Ashton. She married Paul Haefliger, art critic, and after a period in England they returned to Sydney at the end of the 1930s. Here she built her reputation on neoclassical figures in landscapes, contributing illustrated articles to Art in Australia and teaching at the East Sydney Technical College. She won the Sulman Prize in 1942 and 1944. She and Haefliger bought a cottage in Hill End, New South Wales, and hosted many amongst the first wave of artists to the area, but from 1957 onward the couple lived in Mallorca, Spain, where she painted some of her finest works. Four years after Adrian Lawlor painted this portrait of her, most of his paintings were destroyed in a fire at his Warrandyte home. Subsequently, he established his reputation as a critic, but following the death of his wife and the failure of his novel, The Horned Capon (1949), he spent his last twenty years in sad decline. Fewer than sixty of his paintings are known to have survived.
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.
