William Frederick de Haas

I. Biography

William Frederick de Haas’s coastal scenes put forward a pictorial language of serenity, silence, and solitude. Born in Rotterdam, Holland, de Haas studied at The Hague and moved to the United States at the age of twenty-four. Armed with the precepts of Dutch painting, he turned his attention to the American coast. He worked in New York’s Tenth Street Studio Building alongside his brother Mauritz, his fellow Dutchman Kruseman Van Elten, and the leading artists of the Hudson River School, and became one of the nineteenth century’s few marine specialists. His expansive scenes of Maine, Long Island, and Newfoundland provide an important bridge between the Dutch tradition and the Luminist movement then emerging in American art.

De Haas’s seascapes combine the transcendental light of Luminism with the timeless tranquility of the Dutch Golden Age. Seventeenth-century Dutch art served as an important precedent for the American Luminists; the straight horizons, open-ended compositions, and direct observation that fueled Dutch landscapes laid the foundation for Luminist design. In turn, the Luminists modified the Dutch mode to fit a more classical paradigm of geometric structure and balance. De Haas’s painting occupies an intermediate space in the evolution of Luminism, maintaining Dutch principles while embracing American order. His work demonstrates that Luminism itself was timeless in nature, appropriating historical traditions in the service of transcendental vision.

De Haas exhibited regularly at the National Academy of Design and the Brooklyn Art Association between 1867 and 1880. He passed away at the age of 50 in Fayal, Azores, a Portuguese island in the Atlantic Ocean.

II. Chronology

• 1830 Born in Rotterdam, Holland
• 1854 Immigrated to New York City
• 1867 Started exhibiting at the National Academy of Design and the Brooklyn Art Association
• 1880 Died in Fayal, Azores

III. Collections

• Cortland Free Library, New York
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• Minnesota Marine Art Museum, Winona, MN
• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
• The New York Historical Society, New York
• Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, PA
• Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

IV. Exhibitions

• 1867, 1874–7, 1879–80 National Academy of Design, New York¹
• 1867–70, 72–80 Brooklyn Art Association²

V. Notes

1. Maria Naylor, Exhibition of the National Academy, 1861–1900, Kennedy Galleries, Inc., 1973, pp. 379–80.
2. Clark S. Marlor, A History of the Brooklyn Art Association with an Index of Exhibitions, James F. Carr, 1970, pp. 168–9.

VI. Suggested Resources

• Peterson, Larry Len. The American West Reimagined: Gems from the Coeur D’Alene Art Auction. Hayden, Idaho: The Coeur D’Alene Art Auction, 2021, pp. 33–34.
• Falk, Peter. Who Was Who in American Art. Vol 1, Sound View Press, 1999, p. 869.