Pissarro: A Meeting on St. Thomas
By (Author) Anne-Birgitte Fonsmark
Strandberg Publishing
Strandberg Publishing
24th September 2025
26th March 2026
Denmark
General
Non Fiction
Hardback
208
Width 240mm, Height 300mm
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.
Anne-Birgitte Fonsmark (b. 1950), director of Ordrupgaard Museum from 1995 to 2023, is the author and editor of many books on art and curator of, among several exhibitions, Pissarro: A Meeting on St. Thomas (2017).