Jean Bellette (25 March 1908 – 16 March 1991) was an Australian artist. Born in Tasmania, she was educated in
Hobart and at
Julian Ashton's art school in Sydney, where her teachers included
Thea Proctor. In London she studied under painters
Bernard Meninsky and
Mark Gertler. A
modernist painter, Bellette was influential in mid-twentieth-century Sydney art circles. She frequently painted scenes influenced by the Greek tragedies of
Euripedes,
Sophocles and
Homer. The only woman to win the
Sulman Prize more than once, Bellette claimed the accolade in 1942 with
For Whom the Bell Tolls, and in 1944 with
Iphigenia in Tauris. She helped found the
Blake Prize for religious art, and was its inaugural judge. Bellette and her husband, the artist and critic
Paul Haefliger, owned a cottage in
Hill End, an old gold mining village in central New South Wales. Bellette bequeathed the cottage to the
National Parks and Wildlife Service (which manages the Hill End historic site) for use as an artists' retreat. It continues to operate for that purpose. (
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