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Lot Essay
There is a larger unsigned pencil sketch of the same subject in the Olana collection (OL.1982.295), for which see the exhibition catalogue Camille Pissarro in the Caribbean, 1850-1855: Drawings from the Collection at Olana, St. Thomas, 1996, illustrated p. 26 (where attributed to Camille Pissarro).
Melbye worked closely with Pissarro, a native of St. Thomas, in St. Thomas and in Venezuela between 1850 and 1854. Their work together in St. Thomas remained little known until the discovery in the 1980s of a large collection of drawings and oil sketches from Melbye's studio at Olana on the Hudson, the home and now museum of the great American landscape painter, Frederic Church. Melbye had taken a studio with Church in New York in the late 1860s before leaving for Shanghai where he died, possibly as early as 1869.
For a preliminary study of the work of Pissarro and Melbye in St. Thomas, see the essays by R.R. Brettell and K. Zukowski in the above exhibition catalogue.
Melbye worked closely with Pissarro, a native of St. Thomas, in St. Thomas and in Venezuela between 1850 and 1854. Their work together in St. Thomas remained little known until the discovery in the 1980s of a large collection of drawings and oil sketches from Melbye's studio at Olana on the Hudson, the home and now museum of the great American landscape painter, Frederic Church. Melbye had taken a studio with Church in New York in the late 1860s before leaving for Shanghai where he died, possibly as early as 1869.
For a preliminary study of the work of Pissarro and Melbye in St. Thomas, see the essays by R.R. Brettell and K. Zukowski in the above exhibition catalogue.