Though born in Belgium, Carlos de Haes moved with his family to Spain when he was just a child. Haes is one of the most significant 19th century landscape artists, particularly outstanding for his plein air painting executed directly from life. His splendid production was instrumental in the renewal of modern landscape painting in Spain.

His mastery in achieving a simple and real depiction of nature devoid of artifice won him the landscape professorship at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts. Haes was infatuated with nature, and his passion took him all over the Iberian Peninsula throughout his lifetime. Highly celebrated are his renderings of the northern coastline, as well as of the rocky formations of the Picos de Europa, a mountain range he visited in the company of two of his disciples, Aureliano de Beruete (1845—1912) and José Entrala (1849—1886).

His earliest works—which he himself would criticise with the passing of the years—are corseted by the stiffness and rigidity of a still inexperienced artist. However the gradual evolution of his style grounded in a direct observation of nature enabled him to hone his skills and to endow his compositions with greater spatiality and freer brushwork.

In Oaks Trees, a painting that forms a pair with Landscape, also in the BBVA Collection, the artist makes a study of three ancient trees captured in twilight, further underscored by the use of reddish and orange tones. The painting exudes a sense of freshness and quality in his depiction of details, like the shadows on the ground next to the trunk or the reflections of light in the branches, intertwined to create a thick treetop. Through all these devices the painter manages to turn a place isolated in the middle of nature into a romantic and picturesque space that transmits a feeling of peace and tranquillity to the beholder.

The two works have been executed with a similar palette of earthy tones, applied with free-flowing and almost sketchy brushwork, albeit with a much more classical treatment of light.