In 1876 Massachusetts-born Charles Partridge Adams moved with his mother and sister to Denver, Colorado, because his sister suffered from tuberculosis. The accidental fact of this move proved to be decisive for the career of the 18-year-old artist. Adams soon determined to paint Colorado in all its facets, set up a studio in Denver and set to work. The largely self-taught artist exhibited first in Denver in 1886. Over the course of his career Adams painted Colorado and the Rocky Mountains in general, including New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, the Tetons, Yellowstone and Montana. The mountain scenes in oil and watercolor arrested his complete attention and convey the immediacy and affection that were typical of Adam's experience. In 1905 Adams built a studio in Estes Park, Colorado, which he named his Sketchbox. From that studio many of Adam's works passed to the hands of admiring tourists from all over the country.

In 1920 Adams, who had visited the West Coast as early as 1886, purchased a home in California and made the seaboard his new home. He then began to paint marine scenes and seascapes but never stopped painting scenes of the Colorado Rockies. His marine works, however, never achieved the fame accorded to his Rockies portraits. Adams died in Laguna Beach in 1942.