Adam was born in Milan, Italy, to painter Albrecht Adam, a German who had spent the prior several years in Italy. Franz Adam's first notable work was a collection of lithographs on the Revolutions of 1848 in the Italian states, done jointly with noted lithographer Denis Auguste Marie Raffet. He painted his first masterpiece during the Second Italian War of Independence of 1859, a scene from the Battle of Solferino. His best-known works, meanwhile, depict the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.