Daniel Herman Anton Melbye was a visual artist specializing in marine paintings. He was born in Copenhagen in 1818 and originally wanted to be a sailor, but had to give up this idea because he was nearsighted. Instead he was apprenticed in the shipbuilding trade, later breaking off this training to become a musician. But in 1838 he found his place when he started training at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts to become a marine artist. He did this after consulting the art professor C. W. Eckersberg and immediately thereafter became his private pupil.

    Early in the 1840s the young artist began to embark on long voyages at sea to understand how ships and the sea behaved in varying conditions. He brought sketchbooks with him and sketched the seascapes around him. Many of these still survive today. His famous dramatic picture Eddystone Fyrtaarn (The Eddystone Lighthouse), from 1846 earned him the Charlottenborg exhibition medal and it a place in the National Gallery of Denmark.
    Melbye taught marine painting to his two younger brothers, Vilhelm (1824–1882) and Fritz (1826–1869).
They also became marine artists and all three spent a large part of their professional lives abroad. In 1843 Melbye won the Neuhausen Prize from the Royal Academy and the Exhibition Medal three years later. In 1846 he was also awarded the Thorvaldsen Medal, and was given the Academy travel grant for the period 1846–1848.

     In 1855 Anton Melbye met the young Impressionist-to-be Camille Pissarro through his brother Fritz, and for a time Melbye was Pissarro's teacher. Pissarro exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1859, and called himself “Pupil of A. Melbye”, a title he continued using until 1866.
    In 1854 he was presented to Napoleon III and obtained a commission for a large painting for the Emperor and for an album of drawings with Asian motifs for the Empress. His many distinguished clients reinforced his standing and led to still more commissions. Also in Paris, Melbye became a friend of the Realist painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
who for a time exerted an appreciable influence on the Danish artist.

     In Constantinople he was honored with the distinguished Turkish Order of Chivalry. In Paris he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour and in 1858, when he had returned to Denmark after a long sojourn in France, he was appointed a Knight of the Order of Dannebrog.
     The artist is represented in these public institutions:

• The Fitzwilliam Museum

• National Gallery of Denmark (Statens Museum for Kunst)

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art

• The British Museum

• The Morgan Library & Museum

• Nationalmuseum in Stockholm

• The Finnish National Gallery

• The Hermitage Museum

• The Philadelphia Museum of Art

• Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin

• AROS - Aarhus Kunstmuseum

• ​Bornholms Art Museum

• BRANDTS - (Maleri) Museum for kunst & visuel kultur

• Den Hirschsprungske Samling

• ​Fuglsang Kunstmuseum

• KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art Aalborg

• Copenhagen City Museum

• Nivaagaards Painting Collection

• Museum Jorn

• Museum Sønderjylland

• Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum

• Ordrupgaard Museum

• Ribe Art Museum

• Skagens Museum

• The Thorvaldsens Museum

• Vejlemuseerne (Art)

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