Pissarro was born on the Virgin Island of St. Thomas and spent his formative years there sketching the surroundings. In time he befriended a Danish artist, Fritz Melbye, and they sailed to Venezuela together to paint. In view of these experiences it is not surprising that amongst his earliest paintings we find a number of exotic landscapes which are populated with Negro women, as with the Paysage de St. Thomas, which in turn can be compared to Tropical Landscape (Pissarro and Venturi, Pissarro, San Francisco, 1989, no. 8) and Deux Femmes causant au bord de la Mer, Saint Thomas (ibid., no. 5) both dated 1856.

"The first paintings he completed in Paris were scenes of St. Thomas remembered, often including the coconut trees M. Savary had urged him to study a decade before. Possibly he was most comfortable with this subject, but it was more likely that he was emulating Melbye and hoping that these 'exotic scenes' would appeal to a European market. Although the paintings were of the tropics, the colouring was influenced by contemporary French landscape practice, with conventionally subdued browns and greens ... He signed them with the Spanish version of his name, "C. Pizarro". His calling card even had a discrete "St. Thomas" printed below his name ... perhaps to stress his authenticity as a tropical painter." (R. Shikes & P. Harper, Pissarro, His Life and Work, New York, 1980, p. 41.) Such observations are directly applicable to the work shown here and those contemporaneous with it.