Haag was attached to the stadtholder's court in The Hague, for whom he was also director of the collection of paintings, as a painter of horses and horsemen. Aernout Vosmaer published prints after his and Aert Schouman's drawings of the stadtholder's menagerie between 1760 and 1784. Other watercolours of horses dated 1780 are in the Collection De Grez, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (inv.no. 1475) and in the Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam (J.W. Niemeyer, Eighteenth Century Watercolours from the Rijksmuseum Printroom, Amsterdam, Alexandria, 1993, pp. 58-9, no. 23), both of which portray a special breed of horse as in the present study