Dated 1893, this painting of New York's Clyde Transportation Company's Sail/Steam Passenger Liner IROQUOIS is a strong example of Antonio Jacobsen's highly sought after, pre-20TH Century ship portraiture. This painting is an excellent example of the stylistic combinations that are recognizable as components of Jacobsen's art. The vessel fills the canvas, and is presented without other visual distractions.
A sensation of movement is achieved in part to the stabilizing fore-and-aft sails' stiff parallel lines to the hull, which is raked back at speed. stabilizing sails and flags aloft. Jacobsen's treatment of water is uniform and aggressive, with the passenger liner having no difficulty in traversing through the swells. IROQUOIS would hold about 1,000 tons of coal in her storage bunker, enough for her to steam for 25 straight days at 9 knots before depleting her store.
Built in 1888 by William Cramp & Sons of Philadelphia for the Clyde Line, IROQUOIS served from their New York location on routes to Jacksonville and Miami, Florida and the West Indies for years. In 1898 she was among the fleet of commercial ships contracted for $600 a day to the United States government to transport troops to Cuba in the Spanish-America Conflict. Afterward she returned to running winter vacationers from New York to points south, and in the process rescued the steamship ARAPAHOE, another vessel of the Clyde Co. that had lost her propeller off the coast of Delaware, in one of the first rescues attributed to wireless radio in 1907. She would run into the 1920s, and was replaced in the company by her namesake in 1927.
