Egypcian Landscape

It was Carlos de Haes who put up the strongest opposition to ‘daydreaming and fantastic invention’, to the bucolic and subjective vision, promoting instead the observation of natural spaces without idealistic apriorisms, if possible to be painted in the open air (plein air) and based on the direct experience of the artist. In this sense, the landscape begun by him and his followers was truly an antidote (both thematically and technically) and it left indelible marks on Spanish painting, being the transition from Romantic ideals to realism. However, curiously, this canvas was one of the last ones painted by the artist (1883), and the subject matter and the vision are still contaminated by a certain Romantic nostalgia. But it is also true that, although this is a picturesque and Orientalist painting, it has nothing to do with the paintings of Jenaro Pérez Villaamil, one of the Romantic painters that was especially denigrated by Haes.