MR. CARL HAAG'S PICTURES.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR." J
SIR,—With reference to the article in your paper of the 14th inst., which you have done me the honour to write upon the subject of my pictures now exhibiting at the Goupil Galleries in New Bond Street, may I venture to call your attention to a few inaccuracies which appear to detract from that valuable contribution to artistic literature. The writer states that " the Queen has, or had, two pictures of mine, called The Arrival at, and the Departure from, Palmyra,' which, if they were as good as the finished studies of them, must have been better than any- thing in the Exhibition " I have referred to. The pictures could hardly be finer than the studies, because I never painted any such works. I did paint the two " studies " you mention, and they were purchased by Mr. W. Quilter, the well-known art- collector, and were sold in 1875 at Christie and Manson's.
Then you speak of my friend, Mr. Dobson, as " ' the late ' Mr. Dobson, also a member of the old Society." As my good friend, Mr. Dobson, is living, and there never was any other Mr. Dobson of "the old Society," it might give his numerous friends some sorrow to hear that he is "dead."
A third inaccuracy you would probably like to correct is when you speak of "Prince Albert waving his Royal hand over the body of a dead stag, while a flaxen-haired Prince of Wales smiles blandly up at him." Prince Albert has one hand on the stag's antlers, as he shows the Queen the death-wound of the animal ; and the Prince of Wales is not looking up at him, but is turning his head in an opposite direction, as he looks up at his mother, who is actually standing on the other side of him.
As these inaccuracies are a little more than careless, and one of them might be the means of giving the supposed dead man's friends pain, you will perhaps think it right to give this explana- tion a like publicity to the mistakes.—I am, Sir, &c., CARL HAAG.
• Ida Villa, Lyndhurst Road, Hampstead, November 21st.
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