Carl Haag

Carl Haag (20 April 1820 – 24 January 1915) was a Bavarian-born painter who became a naturalized British subject and was court painter to the duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Biography

Haag was born in Erlangen, in the Kingdom of Bavaria, and was trained in the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg and at Munich. He initially practised as an illustrator and as a painter in oils of portraits and architectural subjects; but in 1847 he settled in England, where he studied English watercolour techniques. After this he devoted himself to watercolours.

In 1850, he was elected an associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours before becoming a full member in 1853. He also enjoyed the patronage of Queen Victoria.
Between 1858 and 1860, he travelled to the Middle East, at first staying for more than a year in Cairo where he shared a studio with fellow artist Frederick Goodall. Later he journeyed to Jerusalem, Lebanon and Syria before returning to Cairo. During this period, he made many sketches which he worked up into paintings after returning to London. He returned to Egypt in 1873–74 to gather inspiration for further Oriental paintings.

In 1871 Haag bought the newly-built 7 Lyndhurst Road, Hampstead which he renamed Ida Villa in honour of his wife. He added a rooftop studio under a new double-pitched roof reached by a new octagonal staircase tower attached to the rear corner of the house. In this enormous studio he created a fabulous Eastern themed interior with fittings, furniture, tapestries and rugs collected during his journeys.

He was a prolific and important painter of Holy Land scenes. He gained a considerable reputation for his firmly drawn and meticulously elaborated paintings of Eastern subjects. Some of his depictions of the Middle East are in the Israel Museum's collection. In 1903, he retired and towards the end of his life, Haag left England and returned to the newly united German Empire, where he died in Oberwesel.

Selected works

* ''Evening in Balmoral''
* ''The Sudden Shock in the Desert''
* ''The Danger in the Desert''
* ''The Ruins of Baalbek''
* ''Panorama of Palmyra''
* ''Beduin Devotion''
* ''Ouposts in Montenegro''
* ''Reading the Koran''
* ''Morning in the Highlands''
* ''Bachist, a Howazeen Bedawee and Mabzookh, his Little Son''
* ''A Nubian harper''
* ''Greek Warrior''
* ''Abdullah, Chief of Said Pasha's Bodyguard''

File:Carl Haag A Nubian harper.jpg, ''A Nubian harper'' (1858)
File:Haag Carl - Greek Warrior - Google Art Project.jpg, ''Greek Warrior'' (1861)
File:Carl Haag Adullah Chief of Said Pasha's Bodyguard 1873.jpg, ''Abdullah, Chief of Said Pasha's Bodyguard'' (1873)
File:Haag, Bachist.jpg, ''Bachist, a Howazeen Bedawee and Mabzookh, his Little Son'' (1857)
File:Carl Haag Kieff Yaoos 1893.jpg, ''Kieff Yaous! (Rest is sweet!)'' (1893)
File:The Cave beneath the Holy Rock, Jerusalem.jpg, ''Well of souls'', Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem (1859)

See also

* List of Orientalist artists
* Orientalism

Sources

* This work in turn cites:
** John Lewis Roget, ''A History of the Old Water-Colour Society, now the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours'' (two volumes, London, 1891)

References

External links

*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Haag, Carl
1820 births
1915 deaths
19th-century British painters
Artists from the Kingdom of Bavaria
Immigrants to the United Kingdom
19th-century German painters
20th-century German painters
20th-century German male artists
Artists' Rifles soldiers
Academy of Fine Arts, Nuremberg alumni
British male painters
German court painters
German male painters
German Orientalist painters
19th-century German male artists
19th-century British male artists