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Wilbur G. Adam

American portrait and landscape painter (1898–1973)

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 6, 2026
Entity authorityQ23580459
Source-derived summary

Wilbur G. Adam (July 23, 1898 – March 23, 1973) was an American painter and illustrator who divided his career between Cincinnati and Chicago. He was known for his portraiture and landscapes of Western United States. In the latter part of his career he focused on Biblical illustrations.

Early life and education

Adam was born in the Mount Auburn district of Cincinnati in 1898. He was one of five children of German immigrant and shoemaker Jacob Adam and his wife Eleanor.

He graduated from Cincinnati's Hughes High School in 1916 where he was named "Best Artist".

Adam began his art training at the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 1912 while a high school student and later while working part time at United States Printing and Lithograph Company in Norwood, Ohio. He studied under many famous Cincinnati artists such as Herman Wessel (1878–1969), James Roy Hopkins (1877–1969), Lewis Henry Meakin (1850–1917), Frank Duveneck (1848–1919) and Caroline Lord (1860–1927).

In 1917 he and a group of young artists from the Art Academy of Cincinnati including Bill Bollman, George Fetick, Carl Hasz, Arthur Helwig, John Holmer and Dick Sanders started a communal studio in Downtown Cincinnati on the south side of Third Street, between Walnut and Main. They called it Russet Studio.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Wilbur G. Adam” as american portrait and landscape painter (1898–1973). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1898, 1973, 1916, 1912—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1898-07-23. The account is most persuasive where Wilbur, Adam and American can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as american portrait and landscape painter (1898–1973). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q23580459. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1898, 1973, 1916 and 1912.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Wilbur G. Adam” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.