William Dacres Adams was a painter and lithographer of portraits and architectural subjects. He trained at the Birmingham School of Art, and subsequently studied at Sir Hubert Herkomer’s Bushey School of Art and in Munich, Germany.

Adams was elected a member of the Royal Portrait Society and was Associate Societie Nationale de Beaux Arts. He showed extensively at the Fine Art Society (three one-man shows during the 1920s), the Royal Academy, the Royal Institute and Leicester Galleries.

His work was greatly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites.