Antonio Jacobsen

Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Antonio Jacobsen became one of America’s best known and most prolific painters of marine subjects.  From 1880, he lived in Hoboken, New Jersey, having studied at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen.

He emigrated to New York in 1871 to avoid serving in the Franco-Prussian War, and got a job decorating safes.  At that time, he began painting portraits of the vessels of the Old Dominion Steamship Line, creating about 6000 ship portraits in the New York Harbor between 1876 and 1919.

Later in his life, his daughter Helen painted the skies and water of his pictures, and his son Carl even painted some of the ships credited to Jacobsen.