Carlos de Haes was a Belgian painter and engraver based in Spain. He took his first drawing lessons from the painter Luis de la Cruz y Ríos in Malaga, a city to which his family had moved from Brussels, and later Josep Quinaux in his native country. In 1857 he settled permanently in Madrid by winning the square by opposition of the Chair of Landscape in the Superior School of the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, a year later he won the first medal of the National Exhibition of Fine Arts and in 1860 he was elected Numerary Member of the Royal Academy of San Fernando.
He stood out mainly in the works of landscape theme and for his teaching method, by which he encouraged his students to contact directly with nature and to move away from the academic norms prevailing in Spanish art, approaching Plenairismo. He was a teacher of important artists such as Jaime Morera y Galicia or Darío de Regoyos.