Jojo Davies: “This is Don McKinlay as Napoleon. And that is not Josephine, it is Mum. The view from the window is from when we lived on a farm, in Lancashire. She would have invented Napoleon’s costume. The Victorian couch is from Albert Street. Also, she had a big thing about doilys. When I wanted to paint, she would ask: where are the doilys? That might be a pot of basil on the ledge. She liked ornaments in pictures. And she liked men in uniform. Napoleon has a look almost of resignation on his face. The way she has cut her own face in half is like a Bonnard – off-centre” Photograph: Beryl Bainbridge
Jojo Davies: “Leah was the inspiration for Sheila in A Weekend With Claude [her first novel, published in 1961]. This was painted in Huskisson Street, Liverpool. The picture is of an old Jewish lady from round the corner and although I left Liverpool when I was four, I remember her. She was pretty morose. Sometimes Mum used to mimic her: ‘Oh, everything is so terrible!’ And yet Mum gave her time. She looked out for the strange, the peculiar, the interesting characters. And actually, this painting of Leah, when we were dividing up the paintings between us, was my first choice” Photograph: Beryl Bainbridge
Jojo Davies: “This is pen and ink with thin washes of colour. This is Don and my mum in the upstairs living room at Albert Street. A decanter of rosé has been neatly inked in. This is mum’s brass bed, the bed my sister was born in. I don’t think the owl is symbolic – it is just an owl in a glass case. This was all imagined from out of her head. She did macabre pictures, too – of stabbings, jealousies, difficult times on the farm. She was playful” Photograph: Beryl Bainbridge
Jojo Davies: “I was 11 when this was painted – I used to wear loads of rings. Rudi is about three. It is all in brown raw umber, brown Indian ink. A brown study? Yes, I suppose it is. A reverie of three. We are in the living room at Albert Street” Photograph: Beryl Bainbridge
Jojo Davies: “According to Queeney is my favourite of her books and I love this painting. She has taken Samuel Johnson [the hero of her book, which was set in Southwark] and, rather cheekily, moved him into her house in Albert Street, Camden Town, with – look! – a bloody great doily as a tablecloth. She bought a wrought iron lamp and, one year, I threaded it with beads for her. He is sitting under the light I made as a present for my mum. The moon is like a watchful eye. He is holding Hodge down – squashing him! That look of disappointment on his face. Disappointment was a big theme in her novels, though not conscious I don’t think” Photograph: Beryl Bainbridge
