Antonio Nicolo Gasparo Jacobsen (1850–1921)
SS “Glenogle,” 1884

Oil on canvas
McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Gift of Jacqueline McMullen, 2006.3

Nancy Netzer
Inaugural Robert L. and Judith T. Winston Director, McMullen Museum and Professor, Art History

Born in Denmark, Antonio Jacobsen settled in 1873 in Union City, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Soon after his arrival, he started sketching ships in nearby New York Harbor. Impressed by his precise renderings, owners and captains began commissioning him to paint “portraits” of their ships docked in the harbor. As his reputation grew, Jacobsen completed more than six thousand paintings that document the increasing size and gradual transition of merchant sailing ships into steamers. John McMullen (1918–2005), benefactor with his wife Jacqueline of this Museum, was a naval engineer and the owner of Norton Lilly, a leading ship agency company and operator of merchant navy ships. He assembled one of the largest private collections of Jacobsen’s paintings, to which this work and the nearby SS “Commonwealth” belonged.

The British steamer Glenogle was built in 1882 by London & Glasgow Co. for the Glen Line based in Glasgow. Jacobsen depicts it on one of its early voyages with auxiliary sails set and flying the Union Jack and the British Red Ensign. Sold to Lim Chin Tsang of Rangoon (now Yangon, Myanmar), the passenger/cargo ship remained in commission until 1919 when it wrecked at Syriam Flats while transporting rice from Rangoon to Calcutta.