'If I am a ruined man all my life, or if I walk there in Bedouin sandals, I must go to Palmyra!' This, according to Emily Beaufort, was Haag's reaction on seeing sketches of the ruins. When they reached them in October 1859 they were not disappointed. Emily Beaufort's book, Egyptian Sepulchres and Syrian Shrines (1861), describes them eulogistically and at length; Haag made several sketches, which became the basis of watercolours exhibited in London on his return. In their preoccupation with the light and atmosphere of the site, these watercolours are very different from the dry, academic plans and architectural details published a century earlier in Robert Wood's Ruins of Palmyra (1753; see p.43).

Haag's trip to Palmyra was part of an extended visit to Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon lasting fifteen months in 1858-60. He was a prolific and successful painter in watercolours, and after this journey specialised in oriental subjects. Born in Bavaria, he came to London in 1847 and by 1850 had evolved an elaborate watercolour technique which, as he affirmed, achieved the 'brilliancy of oil painting, combined with the tender-sweetness of water-colours'