Art Brokerage: Wayman Adams was born in 1883 outside of Muncie, Ind. The artistic interests of his father, a horse farmer, encouraged Wayman's early interest in art. As a young boy, he was considered a child prodigy, winning his first prize at the age of 12, and having one of his paintings, a portrait of a cow, acclaimed in a front-page newspaper article as a sensational achievement. At 21, Adams enrolled in the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis in order to pursue a formal training in art. While there, he established a studio, where he would paint a number of his finest early portraits. In 1914, Adams received his first of many top awards. A portrait of Alexander Ernestinoff claimed Adams the Thomas R. Proctor prize at the National Academy of Design in New York. Once established as a premier portraitist, Adams moved to New York City. Clients included the famous and not-so-famous, as well as many of the people he met in his travels. Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover, B.F. Goodrich, Irvin S. Cobb and Alice Longworth Roosevelt were a few who sat for the portraitist. His large painting of the famous Russian cellist, Gregor Piatiagorsky, won first prize in the Carnegie Institute's Painting in the United States. Adams also was a skilled watercolorist, lithographer, etcher, landscape and still-life painter, and sculptor. A lifelong Quaker, Adams was a modest and kind man and was regarded as a brilliant virtuoso. Everyone who met him felt the warmth of his personality and the forthrightness of his character, and none failed to marvel at the magic of his paint-loaded brush. After a successful career as an award-winning artist, Adams suffered a heart attack and died in 1959. During his life, he was a member of the National Academy of Design, National Institute of Arts and Letters, National Association of Portrait Painters, Allied Artists of America, American Watercolor Society, New York Water Color Club, Philadelphia Water Color Club, New York Society of Painters, Art Club of Philadelphia, National Arts Club (Life), Salmagundi, and Lotos and Century Clubs, New York. |
