Pissarro and Melbye

A meeting between Pissarro and a Danish Golden Age painter proved decisive for French Impressionism

This book adds another dimension to our knowledge of the emergence of French Impressionism. In approximately 1850, the later ‘father’ of French Impressionism, Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) met the Danish painter Fritz Melbye (1826–69) in Pissarro’s hometown on St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, at that time a Danish colony. This book argues that Melbye is a ‘missing link’ between the Danish Golden Age and French Impressionism – and the now almost unknown Melbye thus had a significant influence on the beginning of Impressionism.

In 2017, the Ordrupgaard museum in Denmark held the exhibition Pissarro. A Meeting on St. Thomas on the occasion of the centenary of the sale of the Virgin Islands. This extended and revised book presents new research that the exhibition gave rise to.