1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/De Haas, Mauritz Frederick Hendrick

DE HAAS, MAURITZ FREDERICK HENDRICK (1832–1895), American marine painter, was born on the 12th of December 1832 in Rotterdam, Holland. He studied art in the Rotterdam Academy and at The Hague, under Bosboom and Louis Meyer, and in 1851–1852 in London, following the English water-colourists of the day. In 1857 he received an artist’s commission in the Dutch navy, but in 1859, under the patronage of August Belmont, who had recently been minister of the United States at The Hague, he resigned and removed to New York city. He became an associate of the National Academy in 1863 and an academician in 1867, and exhibited annually in the academy, and in 1866 he was one of the founders of the American Society of Painters in Water Colors. He died on the 23rd of November 1895. His “Farragut Passing the Forts at the Battle of New Orleans” and “The Rapids above Niagara,” which were exhibited at the Paris Exposition of 1878, were his best known but not his most typical works, for his favourite subjects were storm and wreck, wind and heavy surf, and less often moonlight on the coasts of Holland, of Jersey, of New England, and of Long Island, and on the English Channel.

His brother, William Frederick de Haas (1830–1880), who emigrated to New York in 1854, was also a marine painter.