19th Century Belgian

This Belgian-born artist earned a well-deserved reputation as one of the major innovators in landscape painting in Spain during the 19th century. In his youth he lived in Malaga, where his father was a trader. And although his father wanted him to continue in the family business, de Haes’ artistic inclination led him to change profession.

His earliest contact with painting was under Luis de la Cruz y Ríos (1776—1853), an excellent classicist painter from the Canaries, who initiated de Haes in drawing. In 1850 circumstances obliged him to return to Brussels where he became a disciple of Joseph Quinaux (1822—1895), who taught landscape at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts.

Years later, after returning to Spain he submitted his works to the annual National Fine Arts Expositions in which he obtained a mixture of critical and commendatory reviews. Around this time, he became acquainted with Federico Muntadas (1826—1912), an admirer of nature and of de Haes’s interpretation of it. Muntadas invited the painter to spend the summer of 1856 on his estate in Aragon. Shortly after that, in the late 1850s, he was offered a post teaching Landscape at the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts, which led him to settle definitively in Madrid. He also maintained a close friendship with Federico Madrazo (1815—1894), who painted his portrait in 1867.

His restless spirit took him on journeys throughout England, Germany, Austria and France, where he won a Medal at the Bayonne World Exposition. He was also decorated with the Badge of the Order of Charles III and the Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic.

The tragic loss of his wife while giving birth to their daughter, who also dead, drastically changed the artist’s character, who turned to his Belgian roots in search of consolation. He travelled to his home country, in the company of his pupil Jaime Morera (1854—1927), and painted many landscapes there.

In the last ten years of his life illness prevented him from painting. A substantial part of his production is kept at the Prado and at the Museo de Arte Jaime Morera.