Douglas Adams: British Sporting Artist

February 22, 2023

Douglas Adams (1853-1920) was a London based landscape painter. He exhibited in the Royal Academy between 1880 and 1894, showed at the Society of British Artists, the Grosvenor Gallery, and the New Gallery and shared a Primrose Hill studio with other artists. 

Adams specialized as a landscape and wildfowl painter and often painted sporting scenes. Many of his paintings celebrated the field sports of hunting, shooting, and fishing, set against stunning Highland landscapes and painted in the Victorian tradition. 

Due to the success of his paintings, Adams worked with the well-known publisher Thomas McLean to create limited edition prints of his more popular painted scenes. These prints were issued in large photogravure format, in triptychs, or as lithographs.

This is a signed Douglas Adams lithograph "Trout Fishing," published in 1893. Produced in a numbered edition of 200, this lithograph is pencil signed at bottom by the artist. The print depicts a Scottish highlands trout fishing scene. Two fishermen are in the foreground along a small river. Behind them, a stone bridge and the rugged Scottish highlands open up to an expansive sky. The contrast of scale between human and nature captured by Adams communicated the sense of awe many 19th-century travelers felt in this land. Artists romanticized the highlands as one of the last “unspoiled” corners of the British Isles. 

Similar in style is "Rough Shooting" by Douglas Adams. The first edition photogravure was published by Thomas McLean and depicts an Irish rough shooting scene. A group of hunters are huddled together in the foreground of the print, with one standing hunter aimed to shoot a bird. An epic, vast and misty landscape extends before them. 

You can see all our Douglas Adams prints available for purchase, several of which are currently on sale. Consider adding this great, late Victorian artist to your art collection today.

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