How are Bellette's forms sculptered?
Though she did not again win the Sulman, she was successful in having works hung in that competition on many occasions, including the 1946, 1947, 1948 and 1950 shows. Bellette continued to paint classical scenes, and around 1950 produced the work Chorus without Iphigenia. Purchased by the National Gallery of Australia in 1976, this oil painting shows five figures, "posed like statues in a tableau vivant, [and who] possess a kind of erotic energy". Anne Gray, the National Gallery's curator, interpreted the scene chosen by Bellette:
Although nothing is happening in this image, we associate the figures with tragedy, with death and mourning – with the classical reference in the painting's title. Iphigenia, Agamemnon's daughter, gave her life for her country when the goddess Artemis asked for it in exchange for favourable winds so that the Greek ships could sail to Troy. Bellette's melancholic painting might be supposed to portray Iphigenia's friends mourning her death.
In 1951, Bellette came second in the Commonwealth Jubilee Art Competition, behind the young Jeffrey Smart. The following year, she won a competitive exhibition sponsored by Metro Goldwyn Mayer, with Girl With Still Life.Although Haefliger never critiqued his wife's exhibitions, others occasionally stepped in to provide reviews in the Herald. Describing her 1950 exhibition at the Macquarie Galleries, one critic considered it "one of the most stimulating and refreshing that has been seen here for a long time" and that "She paints with a strong, sombre palette and her forms are sculptured with great decision. She uses paint sensuously and passionately, as paint, not as so many contemporary Australians do, as mere colour".Two years later, the same reviewer, attending another of the artist's solo Sydney shows, observed that Bellette:
with great decision