Observed on the open water of Greater New York Harbor, crossing before the cityscape on a voyage that would begin daily 18 miles up the Hudson River, is the steamship BENJAMIN FRANKLIN of the aptly named Benjamin Franklin Transportation Co. The company was informally founded by Captain Joseph Peene and his 1834 Hudson River sloop, also named BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, who traveled from Yonkers to New York City on a regular schedule. His sons would continue the company which would also be known as the Peene Line. The steamer in this fine painting by the preeminent ship portraitist Antonio Jacobsen would be the primary vessel of the company for more than 25 years.

This portrait shows the large propeller-driven steamship before the elongated covered wharfs and warehouses of New York City. The 144.8'L x 28.8'B x 10.1'D commercial cargo and passenger carrier was built by J.S. Ellis in his Tottenville, Staten Island yard in 1894. Possessing the look of a stalwart ocean-going tugboat of an extreme size, complete with a gilt pilot house eagle, bell and steam whistle, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN was purchased directly by the brothers when launched and converted for their purpose of carrying passengers and freight between Yonkers and New York City.

The artist has portrayed the bright white-hulled steamer churning the bay’s water as a stiff headwind pushes clouds overhead and the pilot jack and American flags. The painting is crisp and has a depth of coloration that isn’t present in many of Jacobsen’s original paintings. With a mind for aesthetics, the vessel has numerous windows and doors to accommodate the viewing pleasures of the passengers onboard.

A coastal excursion steamer with hull lines that cross between those of an ocean-going tug and a sternwheel riverboat, the FAVORITE makes her way steadily within Greater New York waters. A swarm of passengers -she’s listed as having a capacity of 500 - are enjoying the voyage and the view aboard the New York Steamship as she carries them home from an outing. It’s possible they’re returning from watching one of the period’s yacht races, headed back from the courses off Newport, Rhode Island, the defacto yachting capital of America and home of the New York Yacht Club’s satellite office.

This portrait shows the large dual-propeller-driven steamship in its 129.9'L x 29.7'B x 9.6'D dimensions in a proper broadside. First owned by the Favorite Transportation Co. of Tompkins Cove, New York, the ship was built in 1894 by H.J. Rodermond, complete with a pilot house eagle atop the helm cabin. The numerous windows to the passenger salons are all curtained, and most of the people are dressed in the warm dark wools of a New York fall, are on deck to watch the action. Several hundred New Yorkers of Greek descent chartered FAVORITE to meet the first naval warship of their former country, the NAVARCHOS MIAULIS, a 175' sailing bark, on Sept. 27, 1900.

The artist has portrayed the white-hulled steamer churning ahead as a stiff headwind pushes the flags and scant smoke, overall in the of Hudson River folk artist James Bard. FAVORITE would sail for Florida in 1906, and owned by F.A. Davis and then H. Walter Fuller of St. Petersburg, she became the social center of the port city. People would gather aboard her to voyage and to socially visit each other onboard while she was tethered to the new 3,000 foot long pier.

A proud yacht owner’s active narrative portrait of his new racing vessel, this oil painting was composed by A. Cary Smith for his friend, Commodore William A.W. Stewart of the Seawanhaka Yacht Club of New York. Stewart, a true Corinthian yachtsman and insurance lawyer of New York City, had just acquired the famous sailing cutter MAGGIE from George H. Warren of Southampton, who owned and raced her successfully in American waters since 1882. Prior, Stewart owned and raced the Schooners NETTIE, FANNY and the Sloop REGINA. MAGGIE here slices past a catboat schooner and several others.

MAGGIE, a 45' cutter of exceptional speed, was built by D.G. Hatcher of Southampton in 1874, and was one of the first cutters to inspire artist and yachting architect A.C. Smith to develop the composite cutter than would prove so successful in America and lead to ending the dominance of the big schooners. Smith captained his first, VALKYR in the Seawanhaka Corinthian Regatta of 1882, competing while serving as the official measurer for the club, sailing against Commodore Stewart in FANNY. Tragedy would later strike in 1888 when Stewart and all hands onboard his big 87' British cruising yawl CYTHERA went missing in an Atlantic crossing.

Smith held to traditional marine art sensibilities, and was well versed in the Liverpool tradition of green seas and skies heavy with atmosphere and clouds. As a designer and a professional sailor, he knew every aspect of the racing yachts. This sets his vessels as the shining subjects of his paintings, and MAGGIE is a bright example. This canvas is among the largest we’ve notice by the artist, and was prized by both Commodore Stewart, and his grandson named after him, who would be an officer of the New York Yacht Club for 10 years, become commodore in 1936,and was a instrumental figure in international yacht racing and the America’s Cup in the early 20th Century.

A view of the American Racing Yacht COLUMBIA passing the important Block Island Lighthouse, Rhode Island. COLUMBIA belongs to the elite class of big schooners built in the decade following the end of the American Civil War. She launched in 1871 out of designer Joseph Van Deusen’s Chester, Pennsylvania Yard for Franklin Osgood of the New York Yacht Club. Osgood sold the racing schooner to New York Society figure and author J.L. Wallack in 1881, under whose personal pennant she here flies.

An impressive scale and composition by Yorke, the painting holds the subject ship centrally while adding values with the island’s southeast lighthouse with its first-order fresnel lens to aid incoming ships at a great distance out on the Atlantic Ocean. The working fishermen looking on enviously at her speed and size, and sailing mates onboard a cutter sloop on the turn before her. After her racing career and a brief duty as a houseboat in 1908, COLUMBIA was refitted as a successful Gloucester Fisherman.

COLUMBIA was part of the American team that successfully defended the America’s Cup from challenger LIVONIA in 1871, winning the first two bouts and being complemented in the victory by SAPPHO. She participated in match races and cruising regattas with the N.Y.Y.C. for her three listed owners, Osgood, Wallack, and Henry M. Flagler, the important railroad patriarch of St. Augustine, Miami and Palm Beach, Florida who started Standard Oil with John Rockefeller and Samuel Andrews. Flagler bought the yacht from Wallack in 1885, and retired her only in 1890 when his 171' steel steam yacht ALICIA was completed by Harland & Hollingsworth.

A large West Coast merchant barkentine, KOHALA sailed into the 20TH Century from the Bendixsen Shipbuilding Company of Fairhaven, California under the management of Hind, Rolph & Co. of San Francisco. Patterson caught up with the four-master 26 years after she launched in 1901 and painted a beautiful narrative portrait of her sailing off the California Coast. She had just sold to Robert D. Blackman of Hermosa Beach, and would spend her remaining days fishing the waters near her home port, San Diego, Santa Monica and the Hawaiian Islands until she mistakenly sunk by American bombers on Christmas Day, 1941 off Redondo Beach!

This painting is perfect in compositional scale, with the barkentine riding high and a crew members aloft setting the fore mast sails. Higher still, the American Flag tops her merchant code identity after she has left port. First primarily in the West Coast lumber trade, she quickly established herself on a cargo route to Hawaii from San Francisco, and is named after the North Shore and volcano of the Big Island itself.

Patterson depicts a bright day for sailing, and the subtle outline of the California headland with his usual flashes of small yet extreme coloration in his blue Pacific water. Distance softens the heights, and the open sky has wisps of a new future for the sailing vessel and her new owner, commemorated on its original presentation plaque directly from the artist.

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.