'Mimi' with Rickaby Up with her Trainer, Mr Matthew Dawson, 1891

Owned by Noel Fenwick, Mimi won the 1,000 Guineas and Oaks in 1891. Here the filly is depicted with her trainer, Matthew Dawson, and jockey, Frederick Rickaby. This is one of a number of portraits painted by Adam depicting Mimi.

With his father (Beno, known as the German Landseer), grandfather (Albrecht, battle and sporting painter) and two uncles, also artists, as tutors, Emil Adam was soon more than proficient in drawing and painting horses. He studied animal anatomy at the Hohenheim Veterinary Academy.

Returning to Munich, he received many commissions to paint equestrian portraits. It is difficult to discover when he first undertook work in England (he never lived in Britain), but by the mid-1880s he had painted the stallion St Simon and the Duke of Westminster’s Ormonde, winner of the triple Crown in 1886. Between 1890 and 1910 he completed a large number of commissions painting racehorses and a few hunting portraits. His patrons included the Prince of Wales (Edward VII), Lord Derby, Baron Leopold de Rothschild, the Duke of Portland and Major Eustace Loder.

He continued to paint until shortly before his death in 1924. His eldest son (of twelve children), Richard Beno Adam, continued this line of talented artists, but not in England.