Adshead was born in Bloomsbury, London, as 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 Annie. Mary 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 enrol at the
Slade School of Art in 1921, aged just sixteen. This success led to further commissions. Her next mural,
A Tropical Fantasy, was carried out in 1924 and was on a desert island theme for the professor of architecture at Liverpool University,
Charles Reilly. A large mural by Adshead,
The Housing of the People, was part of the 1924
British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in London. Another mural commission was for
Lord Beaverbrook's
Newmarket house. 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. 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. 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. After the pier's partial collapse, these were thought unrecoverable, but, as of March 2018, several siginificnat parts been recovered, along with parts of another by
Eric Ravilious, from the pier's tea-rooms. 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. During the war, she also created murals for a public canteen in Birmingham and for a service men's club. Despite her busy work schedule, she also found time to organise the
Society of Mural Painters. ==Exhibited works==