Teatime, Birchington

Following her marriage to the architect Delissa Joseph, F.R.I.B.A. (1859–1927), Lily Delissa Joseph painted interiors at Birchington, Kent, where the couple had a summer house, North Sea Lodge. This interior depicts the dining room set for tea with light streaming in through the two windows. The large painting of women holding banners on the wall adjacent to the fireplace is almost certainly one of the artist’s own paintings of a suffragette march, probably ‘The Woman’s March’, believed to have been lost or possibly overpainted. In 1909, the year that Teatime at Birchington was painted, suffragettes in Britain used hunger strikes and, from October, refused to pay taxes, until they had the right to vote. In 1913, the WSPU newspaper Votes for Women listed the Delissa Josephs as WSPU subscribers and highlighted ‘The Woman’s March’, then on display at the Allied Artists Exhibition, commenting that ‘[…] the artist successfully conveys the spirit of the cause for which women are marching’.

Deeply involved in the women's suffrage movement, Lily Delissa Joseph was famously unable to attend her own Private View for her exhibition 'Some London and Country Interiors' at the Baillie Gallery, London in 1912 after being detained at Holloway Gaol (as Mrs. Leah Joseph) 'on a charge in connection with [the] Women's Suffrage Movement'. An advertisement to this effect was placed by her husband, who was very supportive of women's rights in the Jewish Chronicle. Lily’s sister Henrietta Lowy Solomon was a founder member of the Jewish League for Woman [sic] Suffrage and herself twice imprisoned. Both their names (Lily as Leah Joseph) and that of Henrietta’s daughter, Gertrude, were included in the Roll of Honour of Suffragette Prisoners 1905-1914.

In 1963 at a historical exhibition of the Women's International Art Club, a painting entitled Lunchtime, Birchington was lent by Mrs Ethel Soloman [sic]. Mrs Ethel Solomon, Chair of Ben Uri (1943-66), who also presented the current painting to the Ben Uri Collection. It is not clear whether these are two separate paintings or whether the titles have been conflated or confused.

Delissa Joseph also designed two of Lily’s brother Solomon's studios including White Cliff in Birchington (see Solomon J Solomon, The Breakfast Table, 1921, Ben Uri Collection).

We are grateful to Dr. Diana Wilkins for her help with information on the WSPU for this entry.