Celebrated and sought out during his lifetime for his emotionally charged seascapes and ships, Anton Melbye gradually fell into oblivion after his death and has only been rediscovered in recent years. Especially in his paintings of the open sea, which he began working on in 1846, the Danish artist developed his seascapes into a mirror of the soul, of the longings and ambitions of his time. Lacking any sign of people, ships, or coastline for the first time in art history, the shifting surface of the ocean, with its uniformity, impenetrability, and endless space, takes aim at the viewer’s uncertainty, becoming a projection surface for existential reflection. Now, Regine Gerhardt’s new standard reference work on the life and work of this unique painter is at last available.

ANTON MELBYE’s (1818, Copenhagen – 1875, Paris) various sojourns in Copenhagen, Hamburg, Paris, and Constantinople form a north-south axis that makes it possible to see the European dimension of a successful 19th-century artist’s career. Besides his seascapes in oil, Melbye was also recognized for his technically complex charcoal and chalk drawings, and, like his artist brothers Vilhelm and Fritz Melbye, he enjoyed the esteem of private art collectors. 

 REGINE GERHARDT (1969–2018, Hamburg) studied history and art history in Hamburg and Dublin. Until her death she was freelance art historian specializing in 19th-century visual art. This publication is a posthumous tribute to her dissertation on the life and work of Anton Melbye.