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.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Bellette

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

708:

Pope Constantine was selected as one of the last popes of the Byzantine Papacy; he would be the last pope to visit Constantinople until Pope Paul VI in 1967. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Constantine

1655:

Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovered Titan, the largest natural satellite of the planet Saturn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(moon)

1917:

Following the overthrow of the Russian tsar Nicholas II, Georgia's bishops unilaterally restored the autocephaly of the Georgian Orthodox Church. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_Orthodox_Church

1949:

The Soviet Union began mass deportations of more than 90,000 people from the Baltic states to Siberia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Priboi

1971:

Vietnam War: The Army of the Republic of Vietnam abandoned an attempt to cut off the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Lam_Son_719

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

armatole: (historical) A Greek armed mercenary who enforced Ottoman rule in Greece from the 15th century onwards; during the Greek War of Independence (1821–1832), many armatoloi became pro-independence guerrilla fighters opposed to Ottoman rule. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/armatole

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Democracy says that the popular vote can take right away and once taken away the act is sanctioned and upheld by all laws, human and divine. I deny it. I say it is a wrong, however it is perpetuated. Why, mothers. What do you care how you are robbed of your babe? The question is not how it is done, the outrage is that it is done at all. No matter whether it is done by an individual or a conspiracy of many individuals in a community agreeing and concerting according to the forms of law. If the poor babe is torn from your heart, that is the unspeakable wrong. Not the manner in which it is perpetrated.   --Owen Lovejoy https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Owen_Lovejoy