Mary Adshead was born in Bloomsbury and went to Putney High School. She married Stephen Bone when she was 25. She had a productive and interesting life, cf. the rather good Wikipedia entry here. This is a 1931 self portrait.

An undated ‘portrait’ of her husband Stephen Bone by Mary Adshead: he is dressed up and probably the watercolour once had a title such as ‘the city slicker’; or perhaps he is posing for a book illustration. Not surprisingly, the painting has now been sold

The Persephone Post is late today for which apologies to people in the UK (people in the US etc. will just be getting up). But as promised, the first in a series of artistic couples: this week, Stephen Bone and Mary Adshead, seen here at work in 1934 when they were both 30. Tomorrow, Thursday and Friday: paintings by them for sale at The Modern British Art Gallery here.

Young Girl on the Grass, the Red Bodice (Mlle Isabelle Lambert) 1885 by Berthe Morisot is in the new Biannually at the end of a piece by D E Stevenson about her life. There will be no Post on Monday because, bizarrely, in the UK it’s a ‘Bank Holiday’ (in the current circumstances it should obviously have been abolished and moved to much later in the year or even next spring, but hey ho). Next week on the Post: the first of a series of married couples who were both painters.

One of the pieces in the new Biannually is an article by Philip Pullman urging us to reclaim the empathy and kindness which has been lost in the modern world. Portrait of a Woman c. 1884-89 by Minnie Jane Hardman shows the kind of woman we would all like to be – she looks strong and thoughtful and compassionate, certainly not the kind of person who would pass by on the other side of the road.

‘Rest Centre and Communal Feeding’ is by an unknown artist, it’s in the archive of the WRVS, now RVS, which Persephone has always supported (because of the World War Two books in our list).

This is the original jacket for the American edition of The Oppermanns: the text describing the book is now up on our website here.