Mary Adshead:
The Gong
Framed (ref: 9426)
Signed and titled

Tags: Mary Adshead ink pen and ink watercolour music women Mary Adshead (1904-1995) & Stephen Bone (1904-1958)

Provenance: The Artist's Estate

Literature: Llewellyn, Sacha, et al. Women Only Works on Paper. Liss Llewellyn, 2021, p. 38.

The format of Livestock Market (recto) and Picking Tea Leaves (verso), suggests that both designs may have been part of an intended mural scheme. The Gong, created for an unpublished book of poems by Anne Harding Thompson, is accompanied by a verse which starts with the lines: ’This crazy old woman is singing a song, and beating like mad on her old brass gong’. All three works demonstrate Mary Adshead’s preference for simplified colours and shapes, and a delight in humorous narrative which she combined with a hint of neo-Victorianism.