News (Adelaide, SA : 1923 - 1954), Saturday 27 July 1946, page 3


NEW PICTURES BOUGHT FOR GALLERY By Ivor P. Francis No sadder story has ever been told than that of the unfortunate Oedipus of ancient Greece who, by a strange set of circumstances, unknowingly slew his own father, and equally unwittingly, married his mother. This story has so impressed itself on mankind that, today, hundreds of years after. psychologists use the term "Oedipus complex" to describe a certain type of mental disorder. Jean Bellette, the well-known Sydney artist, has taken this for her subject in the surrealistic and romantically classical picture "Oedipus," purchased yesterday by the National Gallery from the present Contemporary Art Society's exhibition. The gallery has also bot'ight Jacqueline Hick's "The Circus Ring" which, portraying a group of women gossiping, might as well havy been called, "We As Others See Us." The drawing is sensitive and intimate, the color superb, and the characterisation excellent. The gallery board could hardly have selected two better pictures from the exhibition.