Julius II Anton Adam was born into a highly respected family of artists in Munich, the son of the lithographer and photographer Julius (I) Adam and the grandson of the horse painter Albrecht Adam. Until 1882, Adam devoted himself mainly to genre painting and made works that were clearly distinguishable from the animal depictions typical of the Adams family. In the mid-1880s, however, a cat picture he had made was so well received at the Munich Kunstverein, that he decided to paint nothing but cats from then on. Using a precise, fine-painting technique, he combined light and color observations of the soft fur with exact observations of their movements. Eventually, the artist became known as "Cat Raphael" or "Cat Adam". In trying to get the attention of buyers, establishing an unmistakable brand nothing less than a necessary marketing strategy. Several of his paintings were awarded the gold medal at the International Art Exhibition in Munich, which earned him an important position among the Munich animal painters of the Wilhelminian period. [KT]