ANTONIO NICOLO GASPARA JACOBSEN
Danish-American (1850-1921)
Antonio Jacobsen was born on November 2, 1850 in Copenhagen, Denmark. He painted with oils, acrylics, and watercolors. His specialty was ships and marine subjects and he was known as the “Audubon of Steam Vessels.”
For generations, his family had been violin makers. His father encouraged him to practice a similar craft and at an early age, he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Design in Copenhagen. Reversed family fortunes forced him to withdraw at the age of 18. When it was compulsory for him to join the Danish military forces, he decided to set sail for America.
Jacobsen left his family behind and arrived in New York in the early 1870’s. He eventually settled in West Hoboken, New Jersey (which is now Union City, NJ). This city lies across the Hudson River from Manhattan. New York Harbor, its port filled with ships from America and around the world, soon became the muse for Jacobsen’s artistic inspiration.
It wasn’t long before a representative from the Marvin Safe Company noticed his drawings and offered him a job painting ships on safes. His ability as an artist was further recognized and he began to receive commissions from sea captains and ship owners, and eventually steamship companies, to record their entire fleet. Some of the companies that commissioned Jacobsen included, The Old Dominion Line, The Fall River Line and The White Star Line, The Clyde Line, The Black Ball Line, The Mallory Line, The Anchor Line and The Red Star Line.
The notoriety that Jacobsen received from all of these commissions helped establish him as the foremost chronicler of American shipping in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In all, he painted about 6000 portraits of steamships that came into the NYC Harbor between 1876 through 1919 (over 3000 are listed in the Catalogue Raisonnes, Smith Gallery, NYC 1984).
Antonio Jacobsen died in 1921 in West Hoboken, New Jersey.
Today, his works can be found in private and public collections worldwide. Jacobsen’s works are represented in every large marine art collection in the United States and Europe including the Mariner’s Museum, Newport News, VA, the Peabody Museum, Salem, MA, the Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, CT, the New York Historical Society, NYC and the Fall River Marine Museum, Fall River, MA.
In addition, his works can also be found in the Bath Maritime Museum, Bath, ME, Bergen Maritime Museum, Norway, City of Liverpool Museum, Liverpool, England, Fall River Historical Society, Fall River, MA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans, LA, New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford, MA , Philadelphia Maritime Museum, Philadelphia, PA, Rhode Island Historical Society, Providence, R.I., Shelburne Museum, Shelburne,VT, Ships of the Sea Museum, Savannah,GA and the Staten Island Historical Society, Staten Island, NY.
In 1995, the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia held an exhibit that included 80 oils by Jacobsen. In conjunction with the exhibit, the museum published a volume by Harold S Sniffen, the museum curator emeritus, whose biography titled “Antonio Jacobsen’s Painted Ships on Painted Oceans” include 100 color pictures of the artist’s ship paintings. In 1996, the National Museum of American History had an exhibit of 45 of Jacobsen’s paintings.
On February 19, 2006, “Fetching the Mark”, an unsigned painting of the racing yacht, Dreadnought, attributed to Jacobsen, was sold at auction for $281,000, more than triple the highest price previously paid for one of Jacobsen’s works. The piece had been brought to an Antiques Road Show event in Tampa, FL and had originally been thought to be a work of Jacobsen’s contemporary, James E. Buttersworth, until further research led to the conclusion that it was by Jacobsen and then sold for $281,000.00.
