• Was a Dutch Golden Age painter.
• He was active in Scotland during the reigns of James VI and I and Charles I of England.
• It has been assumed that Adam was the son of the King's Painter in Scotland, Adriaen van Sonne and his wife Susanna de Colonia.
• However, more recent research reveals, according to
the Netherlands Institute for Art History, that Adam was the brother of Susanna de Colonia, and they were the children of an Antwerp saddle maker Louis Jansz Colonia.
• Adam painted under the name Adam de Colonia in Rotterdam in the 1630s.
• Accordingly, Adrian Vanson, court painter to James VI, was Adam's brother-in-law.
• Adam is presumed to have studied in the Low Countries.
• In 1598 he joined the guild in Dordrecht, and was presumably already active as a painter in 1593 in Rotterdam when he married. • He was father of the painter Isaac Colonia and grandfather of Adam Colonia.
• He moved to London in 1622 and settled in Scotland in 1624.
• Working at the Court in Whitehall he painted at least two full-length portraits of James VI in 1623, and many of the Scottish nobility.
