Dated 1893, this painting of New York’s Clyde Transportation Company’s Sail/Steam Passenger Liner IROQUOIS is a strong example of Antonio Jacobsen’s highly sought after, pre-20TH Century ship portraiture. This painting is an excellent example of the stylistic combinations that are recognizable as components of Jacobsen’s art. The vessel fills the canvas, and is presented without other visual distractions.

A sensation of movement is achieved in part to the stabilizing fore-and-aft sails’ stiff parallel lines to the hull, which is raked back at speed. stabilizing sails and flags aloft. Jacobsen’s treatment of water is uniform and aggressive, with the passenger liner having no difficulty in traversing through the swells. IROQUOIS would hold about 1,000 tons of coal in her storage bunker, enough for her to steam for 25 straight days at 9 knots before depleting her store.

Built in 1888 by William Cramp & Sons of Philadelphia for the Clyde Line, IROQUOIS served from their New York location on routes to Jacksonville and Miami, Florida and the West Indies for years. In 1898 she was among the fleet of commercial ships contracted for $600 a day to the United States government to transport troops to Cuba in the Spanish-America Conflict. Afterward she returned to running winter vacationers from New York to points south, and in the process rescued the steamship ARAPAHOE, another vessel of the Clyde Co. that had lost her propeller off the coast of Delaware, in one of the first rescues attributed to wireless radio in 1907. She would run into the 1920s, and was replaced in the company by her namesake in 1927.

Herbert D. Maxwell was built in 1905 by New England Ship Building Company at Bath, Maine for William J. Quillan, her owner and captain. She measured 185.9 x 38.4 x 14.0, 772 tons. Designed and built to carry bulk cargoes such as coal, lumber, bricks, ice, phosphate, sugar, case oil, gypsum, sulpher, building materials, etc., she plied the Easter Seaboard for seven years before being run down and sunk by the Steamer GLOUCESTER during the predawn hours of March 16, 1912.

Set in a spectacular American 22k gilt frame.

Antonio Jacobsen observed and recorded on canvas a dramatic cross section of the ships that sailed the world's oceans during one of the most fascinating periods in maritime history, the era of the crossover between sail and steam.

This portrait shows the 719-ton Screw Steamer MANTEO, built by the yard of Pusey and Jones at Wilmington, Delaware in 1887 for the E.O. Flood Company of New York. When launched MANTEO's dimensions were recorded as 204' L x 26’ B x 18’ D. She carried cargo and passengers on mainly coastal runs until 1934./

The artist has portrayed MANTEO in ballast riding high in the water with buff colored topsides and four prominent flags; jack on the bow, name pennant at the fore, house flag at the main and the U.S. Ensign flying on her stern staff. Jacobsen's meticulous rendering of her lines, superstructure and deck arrangement is in keeping with his reputation as one of America's premier ship portraitists.

A proven packet from the heart of American merchant sail, HARVEST QUEEN birthed from the design and yard of New York’s William H. Webb in 1854. Her shining moment came in 1857 when on a winter western run from Liverpool to New York, she made a 16-day crossing. Only one other packet, YORKSHIRE eleven years earlier, ever performed this feat. Many packets never sailed the Western Route in under 25 days.

Jacobsen, and other marine artists felt the pinch of the declining commissions once the heyday of sail had passed, and supplemented their early 20TH Century incomes with decorative works revisiting the grandeur of the clipper and packet ships of their youth. Jacobsen surely felt some of their pride, to so accurately research and remember the glory found by the ships from the China Trade, the Cape Horn route to California, and the Atlantic crossings. Here he rakes the HARVEST QUEEN strongly on a challenging sea, with only the fore main sail and her six topsails engaging the prevailing current and wind.

A solitary sailor stands watch at the bow, with the gilt trailboard sparkling beneath. Perfectly scaled to the 188.3'l x 40'b x 28.5'd of the ship, he looks warily at the darkening sky, and whispers a prayer for the safe passage. HARVEST QUEEN sailed expertly for 20 years for the Black Ball Line of C.h. Marshall & Company of New York, until a fateful collision with the S.S. ADRIATIC on Dec. 31, 1875 ended it all far too soon.