Biography

Spanish painter of Belgian birth. In 1835 he moved with his parents to Málaga, where he studied under the court portrait painter and miniature painter Luis de la Cruz y Ríos (1776-1853). In 1850 he returned to Belgium and studied with the landscape painter Joseph Quineaux (1822-1895). During his studies there and on his travels in France, Germany and Holland, he became acquainted with contemporary Realist trends.

He returned to Spain in 1855, becoming a naturalized Spaniard, and the following year he exhibited numerous landscapes at the Exposición Nacional, Madrid, to much acclaim. In 1857 he won the competition for the fourth chair of landscape painting at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Madrid with View of the Royal Palace from the Casa de Campo (1857; Museo de la Real Academia de San Fernando, Madrid), a work showing characteristics of the Barbizon and Fontainebleau landscape schools. In 1860 he was elected Académico de mérito at the Real Academia de San Fernando in Madrid. By 1861 he was officiating and drawing up the regulations for the landscape competitions for aspiring pensionnaires. Consequently plein-air works came to be required in place of the previous tradition of submitting historical landscapes executed in the studio, a practice that discouraged the study of nature. De Haes suggested that only final corrections should be made in the studio, an attitude that indicates his timid initiation and acceptance of Realist trends.

De Haes made numerous study trips to Spain, France and the Netherlands. He received several medals at exhibitions in Madrid (1862), in Bayonne (1864), in León (1876), in Paris (1878) and in Vienna (1882).

He bequeathed his mostly small-format paintings to his pupils, who gave them to the Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno in Madrid.