Morning in the Highlands: the royal family ascending Lochnagar 1853

Carl Haag painted 'Morning in the Highlands: the royal family ascending Lochnagar' using watercolour and bodycolour. Our eyes are drawn across the steep diagonal of the mountain path, noting the royal entourage making its way upwards. Haag has chosen a high viewpoint, enhancing the feeling of ascent and revealing the ruggedness of the terrain. The figures are carefully arranged to lead the eye deeper into the composition. The muted palette of browns and greens, punctuated by the bright accents of tartans, evokes a sense of the Scottish Highlands, a landscape romanticized and, in a sense, consumed by the monarchy. The interplay between the controlled strokes defining the figures and the looser washes describing the landscape creates a tension between representation and abstraction. This tension reveals the dynamic between royal power and nature. The painting functions on a semiotic level, deploying visual cues and cultural codes to convey ideas about power, landscape, and national identity. It prompts us to question the construction of these signs, recognizing that meaning is not fixed.