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.

This Landscape, which forms a pair with Oak Trees, also in the BBVA Collection, is another superb example of the realism of Carlos de Haes’ works, and of the technical dexterity that sustains them. The artist is particularly successful in the chiaroscuros and the shadows created by the rocky formations in the foreground. He uses reddish and earthy tones to capture with greater realism the effect of light that strikes a contrast with the palette of greens, whose intensity depends on closeness and clarity. In the middle ground, at the vanishing point of this composition depicted in nature, we see an idyllic little cottage snuggled among the vegetation, further accentuating the pastoral tone of the painting.

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.