John Ottis Adams was born in Amitz, Indiana and was best known as a nature-loving artist. A landscape painter who was a key member of the Hoosier Group of Indiana painters. Adams, along with William Forsyth and Theodore Steele, committed to depicting his own native region. Typically their early work was peasant genre in dark tonalism, but in the 1890s, it became much lighter in the manner of the Impressionists, and these artists were for many years the premier Impressionist painters of the Midwest. Adams went to Munich, Germany where he followed the regular routine of the Royal Academy. His companion there was Theodore Steele. Adams also studied with J. Frank Currier at Schleisheim, Germany and with John Parker in London. After studying in England and Germany, Adams returned to Indiana and opened an art school in Muncie, 1887.