Mary Adshead

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Mary Adshead
Slade School of Art
Known forPainting, murals
SpouseStephen Bone

Mary Adshead (15 February 1904 - 3 September 1995) was an English painter,

muralist
, illustrator and designer.

Biography

Adshead was born in Bloomsbury, London,as the only child of

Liverpool University Art Gallery.[5] A large mural by Adshead, The Housing of the People, was part of the 1924 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in London.[2][6]

Another mural commission was for

Lord Beaverbrook's Newmarket house.[4] Her mandate was to decorate his dining-room with Newmarket racing scenes and portraits of his friends, such as Arnold Bennett, Lady Louise Mountbatten, and Winston Churchill, on their way to the racecourse.[7] The eleven panels, known by the title An English Holiday, was not fully completed as Beaverbrook became concerned that he would be daily faced with the portraits if he ever fell out with any of them.[8][9] Beaverbrook paid Adshead a two-thirds rejection fee and returned the completed panels which were exhibited in a London department store in Sloane Square in 1930.[1] Later all but three of the panels were destroyed by fire whilst in storage.[2]

Edwina Mountbatten waiting at a puncture on her way to Newmarket[8]

In 1934 Adshead was commissioned to paint murals for the auditorium, designed by her father to replace one lost to fire, on

Paris International Exhibition of 1937.[11]

Adshead's first solo exhibition was held in 1930 at the Goupil Gallery and included the painting The Morning after the Flood which is now in the Tate collection.[12][1] Working with her husband she illustrated two children's books.[1] In 1930 she was elected a member of the New English Art Club.[1]

In April 1941, Adshead submitted a small number of paintings to the

Selfridge's with jungle scenes. Other commissions included poster designs for London Transport, in both 1927 and 1937, and several murals, now lost, for Bank Underground Station as well as painting sets for the film Cleopatra.[11][6][14] Despite her busy work schedule, she also found time to organise the Society of Mural Painters.[5][3]

In 1929 Adshead married

Sir Muirhead Bone. The marriage produced two sons and a daughter.[5]
After her husband's death in 1958, Adshead travelled widely in both Europe and the United States.

In 1966 she produced the volume Travelling with a Sketchbook: A guide to carry on a first sketching holiday.[1]

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.[4] In 1982 she completed a mosaic mural for Beatson Walk underpass in Rotherhithe which depicted the Fighting Temeraire; a project which required long hours of work inside a cold tunnel during winter.[15] Despite some lameness, she blamed on long periods painting off ladders, Adshead remained an active working artist until the end of her life.[2]

Adshead died on 3 September 1995 in London,at the age of 91.[15]

Exhibited works

Adshead's paintings are in many public gallery collections including

Manchester City Art Gallery, the London Transport Museum and The University Art Gallery Liverpool. There are also several surviving mural paintings. Notable works by Adshead included murals, produced with Stephen Bone, for the liner RMS Queen Mary in 1935-36 which were not installed, a triptych for St Mary and All Saints Church in Plymstock near Plymouth in 1957, a decorative pool in the Telephone Exchange Courtyard in Guernsey in 1966 and a mural for a pedestrian subway in Rotherhithe in 1983.[16][1]

An exhibition of her work was held at The University of Liverpool Art Gallery (January–April 2005), Graves Art Gallery Sheffield (June–September 2005) and Kingston upon Thames Art Gallery (October–November 2005).

Further reading

  • Matthew H. Clough, Ann Compton. Earthly delights: Mary Adshead, 1904-1995 (University of Liverpool Art Gallery, 2004)

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Victoria Rodriques O'Donnell (19 June 2020). "Mary Adshead: more than a muralist". Art UK. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
  2. ^
    ISBN 0-19-861351-2
    .
  3. ^ a b "Artist: Mary Adshead". London Transport Museum. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
  4. ^
    ISBN 1-85149-106-6
    .
  5. ^ a b c Sally Hunter (7 September 1995). "Obituary: Mary Adshead". The Independent. Retrieved 10 December 2009.
  6. ^
    ISBN 978-1-871829-28-0
    .
  7. ISBN 9781526725257
    .
  8. ^ a b An English Holiday - The Puncture (1928 Mural - Liss Fine Art)
  9. ^ Robert Upstone (17 February 2013). "Modern British Murals". Huffington Post. Retrieved 4 April 2017.
  10. ^ a b Chris Dearden (12 March 2018). "Bid to save pier murals amid demolition". BBC News. Retrieved 19 March 2018.
  11. ^
    ISBN 1-85437-311-0
    .
  12. ^ Terry Riggs (December 1997). "Morning after the Flood". Tate. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
  13. ^ Imperial War Museum. "War artists archive, Mary Adshead". Imperial War Museum. Retrieved 10 December 2016.
  14. ISBN 9780300152975
    .
  15. ^ a b Alan Powers (7 September 1995). "Mary Adshead: Art on a grand scale". The Guardian. p. 15.
  16. ^ Terry Riggs (December 1997). "Artists Biography:Mary Adshead". Tate. Retrieved 10 December 2016.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mary_Adshead&oldid=1219780777"