Carl Haag was born in Bavaria and visited London in 1847 and 1848, studying at the Royal Academy Schools. On a sketching trip in the Tyrol in 1852 he met Charles, Prince of Leiningen (Queen Victoria’s half-brother) and Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (Prince Albert’s brother), who jointly commissioned Haag to paint them in an Alpine setting as a Christmas present for Queen Victoria (see RCIN 917108). The Queen invited Haag to stay at Balmoral, where in September and October 1853 he made sketches that served as the basis for a pair of exhibition-size watercolours, Morning in the Highlands (The Ascent of Lochnagar; RCIN 451257), given by Prince Albert to Queen Victoria for Christmas 1853, and Evening at Balmoral (RCIN 451255), a depiction of Albert showing to Victoria the stags shot that day, given by the Queen to Albert for his birthday, 26 August 1854. Haag returned to Balmoral in the summers of 1863, 1864 and 1865, after Albert’s death, but the Queen now found him expensive and troublesome over the copyright of his pictures, and did not employ him again.

There are thirty watercolour studies at Windsor for Morning in the Highlands and Evening at Balmoral, all from an old portfolio entitled 'Original Studies from Nature in the Highlands' and presumably acquired during Victoria’s reign. Most are executed in Haag’s broad and free watercolour technique, often with little or no pencil underdrawing. This study was adapted for the left of Evening at Balmoral, though only the pony appears in something like its final form. Haag’s wash background gives the impression of an impromptu open-air study, but it is likely that the group was carefully posed - on 27 September 1853 Haag arranged a stag strapped to a pony in the Iron Ballroom at Balmoral to make such a study, watched by the royal family.

Inscribed on the old mount: Stag killed by the Prince Oct. 11th 1853 on Loch Wemyss

Text adapted from Holbein to Hockney: Drawings from the Royal Collection