Axel Herman Hägg was born at Katthamra, on the Swedish island of Gotland on 19 November 1835. He was educated in Visby, Gotland’s capital and studied naval architecture in the Swedish government dockyard at Karlskrona for three years. He spent much of his spare time sketching his fellow students, but gained a diploma for proficiency as a designer of ships and was advised to travel abroad to secure employment in his field. At the age of 21, he travelled to London, then the greatest port city in the world and sought the necessary opening in vain. After a short period of want of success, he sought further advice and was recommended to try Port Glasgow, on the Clyde. There, Haig worked for three years in the offices of Lawrence Hill and Company, steadily acquiring considerable knowledge of the principles and practice which prevail in the designing and construction of ships. He was also able to employ his pencil as he had done at Karlskrona upon his friends and upon other subjects, including buildings, obtaining thereby, as before, useful practice and a congenial recreation, while the readiness and accuracy of his draughtsmanship did not fail to attract attention. In time, his employer, Mr Lawrence Hill asked him to design him a house for the Hill family and it is recorded that Haig achieved what was asked of him to the satisfaction of all concerned. In his late 20s, Haig moved to London to pursue a career as an ecclesiastical draughtsman in the office of Mr Ewan Christian, who was architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. Haig spent nine years there and is known to have taken an English bride in 1866, being wed at Hove. He later worked for the phenomenally busy Gothic revivalist architect and designer William Burges (1827-81). Haig is known to have executed a watercolour in 1874 of Burges’ major refurbishment project at Cardiff Castle for the Marquess of Bute. Haig worked for Burges as an architectural artist and was accomplished at turning plans into the sort of highly finished coloured views that would impress a patron. His dramatic and extensively reproduced works earned him the title of the ‘Piranesi of the Gothic Revival’. The Scottish architect Rowand Anderson approached Haig with a project to produce a book on mediaeval Scottish architecture, but needed an architect who could etch. As there was no such creature, Haig taught himself how to etch in his spare hours and within several years began producing the large architectural views that would make him famous. His art in that medium quickly gained national recognition and he became a regular exhibitor at the RA and a full member of the Royal Society of Etchers and Engravers. His work for Cardiff Castle was exhibited at the RA in Burges’s name. On the advice of Burges, in 1875 Haig travelled abroad in Germany, Sicily, Naples, Rome, Florence, Pisa, Bologna, Verona and Venice. His etchings from that tour were exhibited in 1880. With Francis Seymour-Hayden and others Haig founded the Royal Academy of Painters-Etchers and Engravers. He combined a Romantic nostalgia with architectural accuracy. Haig is also known to have produced etchings for The Art Journal an important late 19th and early 20th century annual dedicated to the visual arts. It commissioned original etchings by such leading artists as Haig, J M W Whistler, Francis Seymour Haden, Herbert Von Herkomer, Alfred Brunet-Debaines, John MacWhirter, Birket Foster and others. In 1894 the pioneer photographer Alfred Harman, founder of the llford Film Company, settled at Grayswood in Hampshire. In 1900 he offered to finance a church on land given by Lord Derby, on condition that a parish was created. Completed in 1902, All Saints, Grayswood was designed by Haig, a local resident. The church is of early Gothic style, built of local sand-coloured Bargate stone and has a square tower with an oak shingled spire. Haig also designed the Swedish Church in Marylebone (built by Herbert Hardy Wigglesworth in 1910) and is also known to have supervised major restorations on a number of Gothic churches on Gotland, including the cathedral at Visby. Haig died on 23 August 1921 at Southsea in Hampshire. He is known to have exhibited more than 150 etchings at the RE. In total, it is believed that he created more than 400 etchings, the majority depicting castles, towers and cathedrals in both England and on the Continent. Good selections of his work may be found in the collections of the V&A and the British Museum.