La alta montaña en las pinturas de Carlos de Haes desde el análisis de algunas creaciones de los Pirineos y/o de los Picos de Europa (1869-1876)

Abstract

Carlos de Haes was one of the first people in Spain to paint directly from nature. As chair of landscape painting at the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, he helped popularise painting en plein air among his closest and most ardent followers. Despite his importance in the renaissance of contemporary Spanish art, he continues to be shrouded in a certain degree of mystery. Given this inexplicable situation, this paper aims to clarify certain controversies and misunderstandings regarding his trips to both the French Pyrenees and the Picos de Europa, both of which he painted throughout his career. Following exhaustive research of local historical documents and other sources (museum and auction house catalogues), this paper corrects the attributions of seven works assigned to the wrong mountain ranges, and three that wrongly identify the mountains represented. To locate the sites from which the artist viewed the subjects in question, exhaustive field work took place, using in-depth knowledge of the two mountain ranges. The most well-known and indisputable orography, the botany, and people’s clothing and headwear helped identify the locations painted in the works under analysis. The long-overdue correction of these misunderstandings improves our understanding of the Spanish-Belgian master, and also helps us identify the different stages in his artistic development.