Adamson was born in 1855 into an Estonian-speaking seafaring family at Uuga-Rätsepa, near Paldiski by the Gulf of Finland. His father, of local partially Swedish[a][1] descent and a merchant vessel captain by profession, sailed to the United States in 1860, participated in the American Civil War, but never returned to Estonia and lost contact with his family after 1869.
Adamson excelled in wood carving as a child. He moved to St. Petersburg in 1875 to study at the Imperial Academy of Arts under Alexander Bock. After graduation he continued to work as a sculptor and teacher in St. Petersburg, with an interruption from 1887 through 1891 to study in Paris and Italy, influenced by the French sculptors Jules Dalou and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux.
He was named an academician of the Imperial Academy in 1907. In 1911 Adamson, as a result of a competition arranged by the Imperial Academy, received the commission for the monument to the Tricentennial of the House of Romanov. It was to be erected in Kostroma. Adamson invested all of his money into the project, which was never finished due to the 1917 Russian Revolution. In 1918, during the Estonian War of Independence, Adamson returned to his home town of Paldiski in northwestern Estonia, where he would spend most of the rest of his life, except for the larger part of 1922, when he worked in Italy.
During the years of independent Estonia Adamson was commissioned to sculpt multiple monuments dedicated to the War of Independence, including one in Pärnu at the Alevi cemetery, where he himself was ultimately buried. In the 1940s and 1950s, almost all of these monuments were destroyed by the Soviet authorities; since Estonia regained independence in 1991, most of them have been restored.
In addition to war memorials, Adamson also created the first monument to an Estonian – Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald. Adamson's last work was a monument in Pärnu dedicated to a beloved national poet Lydia Koidula.
Selected works
The work of Adamson varies in style and material. He sculpted monuments in Estonia, Saint Petersburg and the Crimea, as well as architectural sculpture, allegorical figures, and portraits.
^In a 24 September 1925 congratulatory article ahead of his 70th birthday, the Estonian newspaper Postimees wrote in a biographical paragraph that his father had originated "from an old Swedish family".
References
^Postimees Editorial (24 September 1925). "Kujur Amandus Adamsoni aupäewaks"(Feature story to celebrate subject’s 70th birthday). Postimees (in Estonian). Archived from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 8 March 2023. "(His) father was a ship captain, sprung from an old Swedish family, whereas mother was Estonian and only Estonian was spoken at the parents' house." (Isa oli laewakapten, wõrsunud wanast Rootsi sugust, kuna ema oli eestlane ja wanemate majas ainult Eesti keelt räägiti.)
^"err.ee". 21 April 2017. Archived from the original on 27 September 2020. Retrieved 9 March 2020.
