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Adriana Haanen specialized in painting still lifes with flowers and fruits. Like the younger Margaretha Roosenboom and Gerardine van de Sande Bakhuyzen, she paid attention to the natural appearance and individual character of the flowers she depicted.
Haanen, born in Oosterhout (North Brabant), was initiated into painting at an early age by her father Casparis Haanen, from whom she received her first painting lessons, together with her brother Remigius and sister Elisabeth. The family moves to Amsterdam in 1830. There Adriana developed as a successful and productive still life painter. Her early work stems from the tradition of the 18th century, flower bouquets in tall vases, laid out on a marble top, painted in a finely elaborated style, with or without some hunting attributes. She has been exhibiting and selling her work at exhibitions of living Masters in Amsterdam and The Hague, among others, since 1841. Her work can also be seen at exhibitions in Paris, Antwerp and Brussels. In 1845 she became an honorary member of the Royal Academy in Amsterdam and in 1855 she registered with the artists' association Arti et Amicitiae in Amsterdam.
In 1862, Haanen settled permanently in picturesque Oosterbeek, where an artists' colony had formed from around 1840, following the example of the painters' colony in Fontainebleau near Paris. She shares a house and studio there with Maria Vos, a painter friend. Haanen continues to use major national and international exhibitions to sell her work. In addition, the painters are building up their own network of clients and buyers in Oosterbeek and Haanen gives drawing and painting lessons. One of her students is the painter Anna Abrahams, who attended boarding school in Oosterbeek. The successes that the two friends had with the sale of their natural-looking painted bouquets and still lifes enabled them to have Villa Grada built in Oosterbeek in 1870, where Haanen continued to live until her death in 1895.
Haanen's work is appreciated by her contemporaries. At the Living Masters exhibitions she was able to charge considerable sums for her work and during her lifetime her work was included in large collections, such as that of King William II and the collection of the State. After 1860 she developed her own style, much looser in touch. We then see many flower bouquets of roses or fruit still lifes with grapes, apricots and strawberries. The flower bouquets are placed casually together on a stone ledge or on the ground, sometimes in a wicker basket on the forest floor. Together with Gerardine van de Sande Bakhuyzen and Margaretha Roosenboom, she marks the transition from the rigidly arranged showpiece bouquet to the impressionistic approach that emerged with the Hague School after about 1865. Her work shows the change from the traditional arranged flower still life of the 17th and 18th century to the 'natural' bouquets and still lifes in a powerful colour of the 19th century.
