Lagoon Landscape
Ca. 1872. Oil on canvas attached to canvas.Room 063A
On the shore of a pond bordered with reeds and bulrush are two hunters positioned with their shotguns –one standing, the other crouched–, watching for any movement across the pond. On the left, the trunk and part of the branches of a splendid birch tree close the composition. In the background, a mass of poplars open up a deep perspective. On the right, a sunlit mound highlights the clay and limestone hues of the lands of Aragon.
A landscape of lesser quality was submitted to the 1990 exhibition, dated 1881, in a similar setting, albeit set in a gentle, conventional scene illuminated with certain dramatic hints in the foreground. This is not the only instance in which the artist has used these old compositions, with slight variations, as source material for other paintings. This practice suggests that it was not unusual for Haes to complete works in the studio, perhaps as the result of the volume of commissions he undertook in the last stage of his artistic production, in attending to his large clientele. In the posthumous exhibition held in Madrid in 1899 as a tribute to the painter, it was exhibited on the same panel together with his works Torremolinos (Málaga) and Valley in the Guadarrama mountain range.Gutiérrez Márquez, Ana, Carlos de Haes en el Museo del Prado, 1826-1898: catálogo razonado, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2002, p.74-75
