Off Caracas, Venezuela

Born in Denmark and trained by his brother Anton in Copenhagen, Melbye spent most of his career working overseas, exhibiting landscapes painted in the Danish Antilles from 1849. He visited Las Llanos in Venezela in 1850, met Pissarro on the island of St. Thomas and returned with him to Venezuela in 1852. Pissarro and Melbye went on sketching trips together from their base in Caracas, Pissarro leaving in August 1854 and Melbye remaining for nine years before moving on to New York and Shanghai, where he died in 1896. For Pissarro's sojourn in Venezuela, see J. Rewald, Camille Pissarro in Venezuela, New York, 1964. Pissarro worked as an assistant to Melbye's elder brother Anton after reaching France in 1855 and described himself as a pupil of Anton Melbye when he first exhibited at the Salon in 1859.

Melbye's work remains poorly documented, but has been noted for its influence on Pissarro's later palette: 'Essentiellement peintre de paysages et de marines, il a également porté interêt à l'aspect urbain des cités, décrivant les moeurs et coutumes, le côté anecdotique de la vie vénézuéliènne. On estime parfois que Melbye fut le premier initiateur de Pissarro aux problèmes de la lumière, et c'est un fait que la violente luminosité tropicale des paysages de Melbye offre une gamme chromatique différente de celle pratiquée dans les pays européens à cette epoque.' (E. Bénézit, Dictionnaire des Peintres etc., VII, Paris, 1976, p. 314).