Who was thought to be at risk of settling upon and then repeating a formula in their work?
Bellette and Haefliger returned to Australia just before the outbreak of World War II. Shortly after her arrival, Bellette held an exhibition at Sydney's Macquarie Galleries. The couple became influential members of the Sydney Art Group, a network of "fashionable" moderns whose membership included William Dobell and Russell Drysdale. Bellette painted and held regular shows – "a solo show every second year and a group show every year at the Macquarie Galleries". Her husband served as art critic for The Sydney Morning Herald for a decade and a half.In 1942, Bellette won the Sir John Sulman Prize with For Whom the Bell Tolls. She won it again in 1944 with her painting Iphigenia in Tauris, inspired by Euripides' play. The composition is set in a dry, open landscape, with several riders on horses whose appearance suggests "the Australian present, rather than Greek antiquity". The judge awarding the prize actually preferred another of her entries, Electra, depicting the sister of Iphigenia also prominent in Greek tragedy – but it failed to meet the size requirements. Both Iphigenia in Tauris and Electra were among the many works created by Bellette in the 1940s that were inspired by the tragedies of Euripides, Sophocles and Homer. Her choice of subject matter and approach placed her at odds with mainstream modernism, while she seemed to shun explicit links between the classical and the Australian. Bellette reasoned that she preferred to choose her palette and the spatial arrangements of her compositions to evoke a place's atmosphere. Critics identified the influence of European modernists Aristide Maillol and Giorgio de Chirico, as well as Italian Quattrocento painters Masaccio and Piero della Francesca, about some of whom Bellette wrote articles in the journal Art in Australia.The most distinctive feature of the artist's work was this choice of classical subjects. In 1946, Bellette's paintings were hung in at least four separate exhibitions. Reviewers commented on her synthesis of "the impulsiveness of romanticism and the deliberateness of classicism", and her "romantically classical" approach. Despite the generally positive views, there were some reservations, particularly that the artist might be at risk of settling upon, and then repeating, a formula in her work. Bellette's treatment of classical subjects extended beyond conventional painting; in 1947 she created a textile design, titled "myths and legends", and in 1948 she created the sets for a production of Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Her "vigorous imaginativeness" was well reviewed, though the acting was not.
Bellette