The Beaverbrook Mural: Newmarket Ring, 1928 (oil on canvas) (see also 221875, 222303)

Lord Derby leads the winner watched by Aga Khan; on the right the Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald McKenna faces ruin. The commission was for Lord Beaverbrook's Newmarket house: to decorate his dining-room with Newmarket racing scenes and portraits of his friends, such as Arnold Bennett, Lady Louis Mountbatten, and Winston Churchill, on their way to the racecourse. The project was never 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 1930. Later all but three of the panels were destroyed by fire while in storage.