Racing Schooners

"[Raching Schooners] may well exceed all of Jacobsen's others in action. He somehow slips out of the realistic and into the imaginative in this superb composition showing straining schooners in intense composition."
-Harold S. Sniffen, Antonio Jacobsen's Painted Ships on Painted Oceans (Newport News, Virginia, 1994), p. 156.

In what might be Antonio Jacobsen's most dynamic and compelling image of a yacht race, Racing Schooners captures the taut beauty and majesty of schooners under full sail on a reaching leg of an intensely competitive race. Each vessel flying the club flag of the New York Yacht Club and their private signals, six schooners strive for first place as three others lag behind preparing to tack in a brisk wind and choppy sea. The painting's significance is further heightened by its representation of Jacobsen's early period, in which the artist used contrasting aquamarine colors and gradating hues to create a magical sense of translucency in the crests of the waves. Depicting light through water, this technique distinguishes Jacobsen from other nineteenth-century painters of yacht races. Born in Denmark, Antonio Nicolo Gasparo Jacobsen probably trained in Copenhagen before immigrating to the United States in 1873. By 1880, he was living in West Hoboken, New Jersey, on the Palisades above the "City of Ships" where he remained for the rest of his life painting the ships that were docked in the New York Harbor. Executing his works in his studio, Jacobsen drew sketches of his subjects on location and then used these works to recall the details of the vessels and sea conditions (for the flags of the New York Yacht Club, see The New York Herald Almanac (1874), pp. 122-123; Harold S. Sniffen, Antonio Jacobsen's Painted Ships on Painted Oceans (Newport News, Virginia, 1994), pp. 1-17).

The foremost schooner depicted in the work is the Estelle, a 63-ton vessel built in 1874 by J. Richards of Norwalk, Connecticut and owned by James D. Smith (1829-1809) of the New York Yacht Club. Born in Exeter, New Hampshire, the son of a clergyman, Smith moved to Ridgefield, Connecticut where he began his career in finance. He later moved to Kentucky and then New York City and Connecticut, working for various firms before establishing his own, James D. Smith & Co.. In 1868, he became a member of the New York Stock Exchange and became its President in 1885. He pursued numerous other business and civic pursuits, serving as Director of several corporations such as the Union Pacific Railroad and the Quicksilver Mining Company and as member of the Connecticut General Assembly and State Treasurer. In 1873, he joined the New York Yacht Club, served as its Commodore in 1882 and was a member of its Regatta Committee in 1884. He also was Chairman of the America's Cup Committee and a member of the Union League and the New Haven, Stamford and Corinthian Yacht Clubs (see "James D. Smith Dead," The New York Times (September 22, 1909), available at www.nytimes.com).

The Estelle was one of the most renowned racing yachts of her day. During the late 1870s, when this painting was executed, she was widely known as a strong competitor, facing schooners such as Dreadnought and Clio and upon Smith's becoming Commodore of the New York Yacht Club, she was the flagship of the Club's fleet (for a work depicting the Estelle, Dreadnought and Clio, also dated 1879 see Christie's, New York, 10 February, 2004, lot 199). Twenty-six years after Jacobsen completed the composition offered here, the Estelle, then owned by L.J. Callahan, suffered a knockdown while racing near Larchmont Yacht Club. Recorded in The New York Times, the accident seemed to have garnered considerable interest:

L. J. Callahan's schooner yacht Estelle, while following the racers, was capsized at 2:30 about two miles off the Larchmont Yacht Clubhouse, by a heavy northeasterly puff...In order to catch up with the yachts No. 2 jib topsail was set. The wind was blowing about twelve knots and the Estelle was carrying fore and main gaff topsails over her lower canvas and jib, staysail, and jib topsail. A heavy puff struck her and her Captain tried to put her up into the wind, but her sail was too much for her, and in an instant she went over to starboard and lay on her beam endsthe increased amount of canvas was too much for the boat. -"Yacht Estelle Capsized," The New York Times, June 16, 1903, available at www.nytimes.com.

After the James D. Smith's and L. J. Callahan's ownership, the Estelle was owned by the Reverend James J. Dougherty. For more on the Estelle, see "A Superb Yacht Race: The Estelle Defeats the Resolute," and L. J. Callahan, Letter to the Editor, "The Yacht Estelle's Mishap," The New York Times, October 7, 1875 and June 22, 1903 respectively, available at www.nytimes.com.