Mary Adshead

[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.

[2] In 1934 Adshead was commissioned to paint murals for the auditorium, designed by her father to replace one lost to fire, on Victoria Pier at Colwyn Bay.

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.

[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.

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