Cecil van Haanen was the son of Remi van Haanen, a Dutch painter who later moved to Austria. He was first educated by his father and afterwards studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Karlsruhe from 1863 to 1864. In 1865 he spent a formative year studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, a period that shaped him artistically. One of his colleagues was Wilhelm Leibl and he is likely to have had some contact with another representative of Painterly Realism, Michael Munkácsy. Throughout the following years he studied under van Lerius and Verlat in Antwerp. After spending considerable time in Vienna, he moved to Venice in 1873, where he found a rich source of motifs for his paintings. Indeed, the “Venetian genre” became his favourite topic. He took advantage of the motifs this magical city so amply provided to work on improving his shapes and colours. Above all he wanted to capture atmosphere, the varying colours produced by different light and to create a rich texture. He soon became a master in producing these effects on canvas. His famous paintings, among them “The Pearl Stringers” which was shown in various exhibitions, are a testament to his skilfulness. Cecil van Haanen spent the rest of his life in England and Vienna, where he became a member of the Vienna Künstlerhaus in 1896.