"Litter of Puppies by the Fire" 
Joseph Denovan Adam RSA RSW (British, 1842-1896)
Oil on canvas
Signed 'J.Denovan Adam' (lower left)
13 ¾ x 20 ¼ (21 ¼ x 28 frame)
Provenance
Anon. sale, Sotheby's, Billingshurst, 25 May 1994, lot 318.
The Bourne Gallery, London U.K.
 
Joseph Denovan Adam, was both a commercial and critical success, receiving numerous prizes, awards and medals in addition to holding many major solo exhibitions. He was awarded a Gold Medal at the Paris Salon of 1894. 
 
Between 1859 and 1892 Joseph Denovan Adam exhibited 25 oils at the Royal Academy in London, as well as many more at the British Institution, the Royal Society of British Artists and the Paris Salon.
 
J. Denovan Adam, R.S.A., was born in Glasgow in 1842, the son of the Scottish landscape painter Joseph Adam, Joseph Denovan Adam would go on to eclipse the achievements of his father becoming late Victorian Britain’s most celebrated painter of Highland cattle. Where others painters of the Highlands were content to dot their landscapes with a few cattle Adam gave them pride of place. 
 
Adam was a stickler for painting from nature, and had a large studio - part wooden hut, part glass conservatory – built on his house to serve as an all-weather observation base. He called it his “cattle atelier”, and here he established a school of animal painting where he kept many live animals for his students to draw.
 
In 1871 he took up his residence permanently in Scotland, and in 1887 he established a school at Craigmill, near Stirling, for the study of Animal painting. He first exhibited in the Royal Scottish Academy in 1868.
 
He was elected an Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1884, and an Academician in 1892. He was awarded medals for his works exhibited in Munich in 1892; and in 1894 the French Government did him the honor of offering to purchase one of his works, Evening Strathspey, exhibited in the Salon, which, however, he had to decline, as the picture in question was his Diploma Work, the property of the Academy.
 
Twenty-four of his paintings are held in UK public collections including at Glasgow Museums & Galleries, Paisley Museums & Galleries, The National Trust for Scotland, Kelvingrove Gallery, The Ulster Museum and the Royal Scottish Academy.