Career
Born into a seafaring family, Adamson excelled in wood carving as a child. He moved to Saint St. Petersburg in 1875 to study at the Imperial Academy of Arts under Alexander Bock. Adamson produced his best-known work in 1902.
His Russalka Memorial, dedicated to the 177 lost sailors of the Ironclad warship Russalka, features a bronze angel on a slender column.
The other work is architectural. His four allegorical bronzes for the Elisseeff department store in Saint St. Petersburg (for architect Gavriil Baranovsky), and the French-style caryatids and finial figures for the Singer House (for architect Pavel Suzor) are major components of the "Russian Art Nouveau" visible along Nevsky Prospekt.
He was named an academician of the Imperial Academy in 1907. In 1918, in the context of the Russian Revolution and the Estonian War of Independence, Adamson returned to his home town of Paldiski in northwestern Estonia, where he spent the rest of his life.