The artist and textile designer Josephine Bayliss was known in the London theatre world as Cameron Mackintosh's favourite costume painter on major productions such as 'Cats' and 'Phantom of the Opera'. She was married to Clifford Bayliss, the legendary 1930s Melbourne art student who disappeared into wartime London, never to return. After his death in 1989 Josephine, left with a studio of unseen and unexhibited paintings, drawings and sculpture representing fifty years of work, devoted the rest of her life establishing his reputation as a notable Australian Surrealist. She enlisted the help of Alannah Coleman, the London-based Australian dealer who had studied at the National Gallery School in Melbourne at the same time as Bayliss during the mid-1930s.

Alannah was deeply impressed, as was Arthur Boyd, whose studio was in Hampstead, about twenty minutes walk from the Bayliss flat in Chalk Farm. Crucially, Dr Bernard Smith, the principal Australian historian, was due in town for the publication of his latest book on Cook's voyages, and would be staying with the Boyds. Dr Smith's reaction to Cliff Bayliss's surreal images of the 1940s is clearly delineated in his introduction to the subsequent exhibition catalogue at the Bridget McDonnell Gallery in Carlton in 1995 -- ''Clifford Bayliss 1912-1989 Surrealist Drawings from the 1940s.'' Purchases by National and State institutions and significant private collections established Bayliss at the forefront of Australian Surrealism.

Josephine Margaret was born in Battersea on May 15th 1936 to Harold Richard Lonergan, engineer's draftsman, and Margaret Josephine Lonergan, formerly Massy. Joephine's first job was in the Civil Service as an assistant in the Oriental Department of the British Museum. After commuting from the family home in Farnborough for several years she moved to a boarding house near Gloucester Road in 1960. She found that one of the rooms on the same floor was occupied by a familiar figure, an artist who regularly sketched Orienal sculpture in the British Museum. He introduced himself as Cliff Bayliss, assistant production manager at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. A deep mutual interest in classical literature, poetry, theatre and music was the initial basis of their time together. With Cliff's encouragement Josephine left the museum and successfully applied to the painting course at the Central School of Art in Holborn. Three years later she was the only student from her year to be accepted for post-graduate studies at the Royal College of Art on Kensington Gore. Her quiet group of R.C.A. friends,  which included James Ravilious, were referred to by the rowdier element in her year, headed by Ian Dury, as The Poets.

Cliff worked long hours at the Opera House, often seven days a week, and Josephine spent an increasing amount of time there. She was employed casually in the costume department, where her painter's knowledge of pigments and mixing colours were a great advantage. She received no training, and was only given the jobs nobody else wanted, but this was to be the basis of her later career.

Cliff Bayliss had married an Austrian Jewish lady in 1938, a humanitarian act that gave her a visa out of Nazi Germany. His wife then left London, probably for the U.S.A., and Cliff lost contact with her. This made a divorce impossible for many years, but eventually Cliff and Josephine were married in 1972. Shortly afterwards they moved to the recently built apartment in Chalk Farm where Cliff lived and painted for the rest of his life. A career move in 1964 to teaching technical drawing, first at the London College of Printing, later at the Central School of Art, and finally at Croydon Art School, afforded more time in his own studio than when on constant call at the Opera House.

After Cliff died Josephine successfully established his reputation as the highly original talent he had always promised to be. She continued with her theatre work, and set herself up as a jobbing gardener to the artists and musicians of Hampstead, Chak Farm and Camden. She had always been fascinated by Persian poetry, and decided to pursue that interest by learning Classical Persian at London University.

Eventually, she left London to find a garden of her own, one with a view, at East Cliff, Lyme Regis. 

Josephine died there on 4th December 2022. She was told that she had terminal leukaemia in mid-summer, and spent her time quietly putting her affairs in order and tending to her garden above Lyme Bay through the brilliant autumn we had this year.