Mary Adshead

Mary Adshead (15 February 1904 London - 3 September 1995 London) was an English painter, muralist, illustrator and designer.

Life and work

Adshead was born in Bloomsbury, London, the only child of Stanley Davenport Adshead, architect, watercolourist, and Professor of Civic Design first at Liverpool, and later at London University, and his wife Mary. Mary Adshead attended Putney High School from 1916 to 1919 and then spent six months in Paris. Due to her fathers' position within London University she was able to enroll at the Slade School of Art in 1921, aged just sixteen.[1] There Henry Tonks recognised her ability and arranged her first mural commission, for a boys' club in Wapping, working with Rex Whistler. This success led to further commissions. Her next mural, carried out in 1924, was on a desert island theme for the professor of architecture at Liverpool University, Charles Reilly. This mural still exists and is on display at Liverpool University Art Gallery.[2] A large mural by Adshead, The Housing of the People, was shown at the 1924 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley.[1]

Another commission was for Lord Beaverbrook's Newmarket house. Her mandate was to decorate his dining-room with Newmarket racing scenes and portraits of his friends, such as Arnold Bennett, Lady Louis Mountbatten, and Winston Churchill, on their way to the racecourse. The project was never completed as Beaverbrook became concerned that he would be daily faced with the portraits if he ever fell out with any of them.[3] Beaverbrook paid Adshead a two-thirds rejection fee and returned the completed panels which were exhibited in a London department store in 1930. Later all but three of the panels were destroyed by fire whilst in storage.[1] Adshead also painted a mural for the British Pavilion at the Paris Exhibition of 1937.[4]

Her first solo exhibition was held in 1930 at the Goupil Gallery. Working with her husband, she illustrated two children's books. She designed some pictorial issues of stamps for the GPO in 1949, followed by the 2s 6d and 5s high value definitive stamps in 1951, and she designed the frame around the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II on the 8d, 9d, 10d and 11d Wilding series definitive stamps. In 1950 she decorated the fourth-floor restaurant of Selfridge's with jungle scenes. Other commissions included poster designs for London Transport and several murals, now lost, for Bank Underground Station as well as painting sets for the film Cleopatra.[4] Despite her busy work schedule, she also found time to organise the Society of Mural Painters.[2]

In 1929 she was married to Stephen Bone, son of the artist Sir Muirhead Bone. The marriage produced two sons and a daughter.[2] After her husbands death in 1958, Adshead travelled widely in both Europe and the United States. She studied techniques of mosaic decoration in Ravenna and Sicily and had a number of exhibitions of her work both as a solo artist and alongside the works left by Stephen Bone. Despite some lameness, blamed on long periods painting off ladders, Adshead remained an active working artist until the end of her life.[1]

Exhibited works
Lady Louis Mountbatten waiting at a puncture on her way to Newmarket[3]

Adshead's paintings are in many public gallery collections including The Tate, The Graves Art Gallery Sheffield, The Imperial War Museum, Manchester City Art Gallery, The London Transport Museum and The University Art Gallery Liverpool. There are also several surviving mural paintings.

An exhibition of her work was held at The University of Liverpool Art Gallery (21 Jan-29 Apr 2005),[5] Graves Art Gallery Sheffield (25 Jun-17 Sept 2005) and Kingston upon Thames Art Gallery (1 Oct - 19 Nov 2005).