Pissarro and Melbye | Anne-Birgitte Fonsmark

A few decades ago, an extraordinary artistic treasure was discovered beneath a staircase in a house in New York State: a collection of hundreds of works and sketches that adds an entirely new dimension to art history. This groundbreaking discovery brought to light previously unknown works by two artists – one celebrated as a founder of French Impressionism, the other all but written out of art history. It also proved to contain the key to a largely unexplored connection between the Danish Golden Age and French Impressionism.

Around 1850 Camille Pissarro met the Danish painter Fritz Melbye on Pissarro’s native island of St Thomas in the Caribbean, and for several years thereafter the two travelled and worked in close partnership. Pissarro and Melbye focuses on the significance of this artistic encounter and, through a wide range of works, traces their shared years in the Caribbean and Venezuela. The book is richly illustrated with works from the rediscovered collection and expounds the argument that Melbye was Pissarro’s first teacher and a vital link between him and the Danish Golden Age tradition. Accompanied by sketches, watercolours and oil paintings by both artists, it thus adds a new chapter to our understanding of Impressionism.