J. Ottis Adams

John Ottis Adams (July 8, 1851 – January 28, 1927) was an American impressionist painter and art educator who is best known as a fanatic of the Hoosier Group of Indiana landscape painters, along in imitation of William Forsyth, Richard B. Gruelle, Otto Stark, and T. C. Steele. In addition, Adams was among a activity that formed the Society of Western Artists in 1896, and served as the organization's president in 1908 and 1909.

Adams grew going on in central Indiana, but conventional his formal art training at the South Kensington School of Art in London. He spent seven years in Germany, where he attended the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. Adams formed the Muncie Art School in imitation of Forsyth, but the intellectual closed after two years. Adams next assisted in planning and taught art classes at the John Herron Art Institute, which forward-thinking became the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the John Herron School of Art in Indianapolis. He next gave informal art lessons at the Hermitage, his home and studio near Brookville, Indiana. In 2004 the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places; it is next a contributing property to the Brookville Historic District.

Several major exhibitions have included Adams's work: Five Hoosier Painters in Chicago, Illinois, in 1894; the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (World's Fair) in Saint Louis, Missouri, in 1904; the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, California, in 1915; and the first Hoosier Salon in Chicago in 1925. In 1910 Adams exhibited internationally at the Buenos Aires Exposition in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Santiago, Chile, where one of his paintings, A Frosty Morning, received an reliable mention. Adams won several supplementary prizes for his art. Iridescence of a Shallow Stream won a bronze medal at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (the 1904 World's Fair) and A Winter Morning won the $500 Fine Arts Building Prize at the Society of Western Artists exhibition in Chicago in 1907. Adams's produce an effect is represented in the collections of several Indiana civic and cultural institutions.

Today his paintings are held in a number of private collections and museums, including the Haan Mansion Museum of Indiana Art.