Hometown History #11: Charles Partridge Adams –Artist of the West

Above, a painting of Mount Sneffels, the highest summit of the Sneffels Range in the Rocky Mountains, by Franklin-born Charles Partridge Adams.

With family roots in Franklin that went back to the earliest days of the town, Charles Partridge Adams (January 12, 1858 – October 14, 1942), might well have lived out his days as an artist or in some more conventional pursuit in the town or region of his birth.

However, fate intervened. In an effort to improve the health of their daughter, his parents uprooted the family and moved to supposedly more salubrious climate of Denver, Colorado in 1876, when he was 18. Whether it was the region’s scenery or the job he took in the city as an engraver; in either case he soon made it clear that art, and specifically painting was where he wanted to make a career.

Although Adams didn’t attend an art school, he studied initially in Colorado with Helen Henderson Chain, a romantic figure who was not only an artist (and the first female artist to reside in the state, too), but also an avid mountaineer. He continued thereafter to make numerous pilgrimages to meet many of the respected or rising artists of the day, going to California  and eventually to New York to meet Georg Inness and Worthington Whitteredge, who was something of a star at the time but is less well known today.

He did apparently get to New England on occasion and even painted New England subjects, from time to time. But the bulk of his work focused on Colorado, particularly boldly executed mountain scenes. He worked equally in oils and water colors, eventually creating around 1000 works.

His later years were spent mostly in California and he also traveled to Europe at one point.

The 1910 Denver Municipal Facts, Vol. 3, discusses Adams, noting, “Mr. Adams can hold his own place bravely and well among the masters of landscape painting with whom he is here associated. At a later date it is proposed to devote extended space on the walls of the gallery to the works of Mr. Adams in all their varying range of subject and method.”

In the late 20th century, Adams, began to see he reputation burnished by admirers. Ann Condon Barbour published Charles Partridge Adams: Painter of the West, in 1976, currently out of print. Then, in the 1990s, three art scholars, Dorothy Dines, Stephen J. Leonard, and Stanley L. Cuba, coauthored, The Art of Charles Partridge Adams,
which runs to 146 pages and includes 92 full color images of the artist’s work.

A website devoted to Adams was set up in recent years by Steve Andreas, a collector of his paintings. Unfortunately, Andreas died a few years ago but the site is still maintained by Steve’s wife.

Below, Adams at work. Both images accompanying this story are reproduced with the permission of Conirae Andreas.