ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
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 1870s. 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, 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 6,000 portraits of steamships that came into the NYC Harbor between 1876 through 1919 (over 3,000 are listed in the Catalogue Raisonnes, Smith Gallery, NYC 1984).
Antonio Jacobsen died in 1921 in West Hoboken, New Jersey.