Julius (II) Adam was born son of the lithographer and photographer Julius (I) Adam and grandson of the animal and war painter Albrecht Adam in Munich on 18 May, 1852. From an early point on he followed in his father's footsteps was trained in photography. As a boy at the age of fourteen he went to Rio de Janeiro for six years, where he worked as landscape photographer and retoucher. After his return in 1872, Adam began to study under Michael Echter at the School of Applied Arts in Munich. In 1874 he changed to class of nature and landscape painting. In the following years he primarily studied with Wilhelm von Diez. After the death of his father, he took on odd jobs, such as poster designer and wood engraver in order to support the family financially. Until 1882 the artist was mainly occupied with genre painting, thus clearly distancing himself from Adam's family tradition of animal painting. However, in the mid-1880s a painting of a cat was well received by the Munich Kunstverein, that he henceforth became almost exclusively occupied with cat painting. His contemporaries called him "Cat Raphael" or "Cat Adam". He worked on his subject at a consistently high artistic level, combining the exact light and color observations of the Diez school with great empathy for the portrayed animals. Several his pictures were honored with the Golden Medal at the International Art Exhibition in Munich. Julius (II) Adam died on 23 September, 1913 in his hometown. Among the Munich animal painters of those days he occupied a front rank.