CARL HAAG (Erlangen 1820-1915 Oberwesel)

An old label on the back of the frame of this watercolor describes it as the original study for Happiness in the desert. A second, monumental version (64 x 133 cm) of the same subject, dated 1867, was on the market in recent years (Christie’s, London, 21 June 2000, lot 61). Both versions are recorded in 1867 in contemporary newspapers when Haag exhibited the larger composition at a show of the Watercolour Society (‘The Watercolor Societies’, The Spectator, 4 May 1867, p. 497). The present sheet is dated in the year Haag married Ida Büttner (W. Karbach, Carl Haag. Victorian Court Painter and Travelling Adventurer Between Orient and Occident, Berlin, 2019, pp. 213-214). The choice of the subject and the title may have been influenced by events in the artist’s private life.