Portrait of Albert Einstein

 Albert Einstein  18 x 24 Acrylic on Cradled Board

 

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was the premiere physicist, if not scientist of the early 20th Century.  His theories helped to redefine the nature of matter and energy and, on a practical level, paved the way for the development of nuclear weapons and nuclear power.  Probably the most brilliant and certainly the most famous scientist of all time, his very name is synonymous with genius.

Albert Einstein was born in March 14, 1879 in the city of Ulm, Germany, situated on the Danube River in the state of Wurttemberg.  He came from a secular Jewish family of the middle class.  His father Hermann was a salesman and an engineer; his uncle was the founder of a Munich electrical manufacturing company.  It is commonly thought that Albert did not talk until he was 3, or 4, or 5, but there is no evidence of this or that he suffered from a learning disability.  Albert attended a Catholic elementary school in Munich and was an excellent student (not a poor one as if often asserted).  At the age of 8 he began studying at the Luitpold Gymnasium.  There, however, he failed to impress his teachers and chafed at the regimentation and the rote style of teaching practiced.  Bored by the curriculum,  the young Einstein, a mathematics prodigy,  pursued studies on his own.  He taught himself calculus when he was only 12 years old.  At 13 he immersed himself in Emmanual Kant’s difficult treatise, Critique of Pure Reason and the writings of Charles Darwin.  When he was 15, Einstein was asked to leave the school, for he was setting a bad example for the other students.

At the early age of 16 Albert Einstein applied for admission to the Federal Institute of Technology (also called Polytechnic) in Zurich, Switzerland, but he was rejected, failing the tests in biology, zoology, and languages.  The following year, though, after completing his secondary education in a school in Aarau, Switzerland, he passed the tests.  In September 1896 he was enrolled in the Zurich Polytechnic, a four-year college where he hoped to qualify as a math and physics teacher.  To evade military service (he was a lifelong pacifist) Einstein renounced his German citizenship in January of 1896. In 1901 he became a Swiss citizen.

Of the six students who were taking Einstein’s course of study was  a Serbian woman, Mileva Marić (1875-1948), born of a wealthy family.  Intellectually brilliant, she struck up a friendship with Einstein; they shared a keen interest in physics.   In time the friendship grew into something more: Mileva became pregnant by Einstein in 1901.  Interrupting her education, she moved temporarily back to Serbia where a daughter, Lieserl was born.  When she was one year old, Lieserl contracted scarlet fever and later died, although this is not certain: she may have survived and adopted by a Serbian family.  At any rate, it is likely Einstein never saw his daughter.

Mileva, failing her exams twice, put aside her career in science to marry Albert Einstein in January 1903.  (There have been claims that Mileva assisted and collaborated with her husband on his studies during their marriage, but this is unlikely: Albert seemed a traditional husband and little drawn to collaboration).  Albert and Mileva would have two sons, Hans Albert, born in May 1904 and Eduard, born in July 1910.  Hans Albert, who died in 1973, became a hydraulic engineer and was recognized as an expert in his field.  He emigrated to America after the Nazi takeover of Germany and during the war worked for the US Department of Agriculture.  Later, he taught at the University of California.  The younger son, Eduard, was committed to studying medicine.  However, at the age of 20, he had a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with schizophrenia.  Drug and electroshock therapy did little to improve his condition and he suffered from mental illness the rest of his life.  His mother cared for him until her death in 1948, after which he was placed in a psychiatric clinic in Zurich, where he died in 1965.  Albert dutifully corresponded with his son during his lifetime.

After his graduation in 1900, the 21 year-old Albert Einstein spent a couple frustrating years searching for a permanent teaching position.  Eventually he settled instead upon a job in Bern at the Swiss Patent Office, where, as an assistant examiner, he evaluated patent applications.  This furnished him with an income to support a family and time to pursue his own studies.

The year 1905 was Einstein’s annus mirabilis (miracle year), when he established himself as one of the world’s foremost scientists.  Firstly, he completed his doctoral thesis, A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions, and was awarded a PhD by the University of Zurich.  Then he published no less that four significant papers that would revolutionize physics and change forever man’s concept of the universe.  These concerned the following subjects:

The Photoelectric effect is the phenomenon by which light causes the emission of electrons.  To explain certain anomalies in existing theory, Einstein postulated that light is not composed of waves, but of photons, particles that convey electromagnetic energy, but which, at rest, have no mass.

Brownian motion is the random movement of particles suspended in a fluid or gas.  Einstein explained the phenomenon as attributable to the molecules of the fluid striking the particles and causing them to move.  Although this was not confirmed experimentally until 1908, Einstein’s explanation provided evidence for the long theorized existence of molecules and atoms as the building blocks of matter.

In his papers on the Special Theory of Relativity, which explains what happens when bodies are in uniform motion at a constant speed and direction, and his paper on Mass-energy equivalence Einstein presented conclusions that exploded the long-accepted theories of physics put forward by Isaac Newton in the 17th Century.  He asserted that he laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers, for example, light moves at a constant speed irrespective of the motion of observers.  (This is counter-intuitive, but demonstrably true).  The theory removed the necessity for the existence of ether, which scientists long believed was a medium necessary for light’s propagation.  Einstein asserted that light, unlike sound, could travel through a vacuum.  He postulated the existence of a space-time continuum, a fourth dimension beyond height, width, and depth.  Also, he claimed that time is relative: an event may occur at a different time to one observer than to another.  Speed causes time dilation, a moving body experiences a slower passage of time than a body at rest, in proportion to its speed.  Space-time can be curved by the force of gravity of massive objects; sunlight can be bent by them.  Matter and energy are merely forms of the same stuff and that, under certain conditions, one can change into the other.  Energy can be released by the splitting of an atom (fission) or by the merging of atomic nuclei (fusion).  He offered the now famous equation E = mc2, that is, energy is mass times the speed of light squared, illustrating that a large amount of energy can be released by a small amount of matter.  The speed of light is constant.   A moving body acquires more mass as it nears the speed of light, at which point its mass would become infinite, with infinite energy required to continue its movement.  Consequently nothing can move faster than the speed of light.

For these remarkable scientific papers the 26-year old Einstein received a huge amount of recognition and was now regarded as one of the world’s leading scientists.  And he received the teaching offers he had desired.  In 1908 he became a lecturer at the University of Bern, in 1909 an associate professor at the University of Zurich, and a full professor in 1911 at the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, then part of Austria-Hungary.  From 1912-14 he taught at Zurich’s Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, but then moved to Berlin to teach at the Berlin University and, in 1917, to serve as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics.

Among other areas of study, Einstein revisited his Special Theory of Relativity and, in 1915, added to it ten field equations describing the interaction of gravity in a space-time continuum that has been curved by energy and mass.  These comprise the heart of his General Theory of Relativity.  They theory  predicts the existence of gravity waves and black holes, areas of the universe whose density is so great that light cannot escape from them.  It also presents the concept, significant in astrophysics, that the gravity of massive bodies can actually bend light.  This part of relativity was recognized as experimentally provable.  Light from distant stars would be bent when passing near our sun and the effect would be revealed by photography — but only during a total solar eclipse when stars near the sun in the sky were visible.  During the eclipse of May 29, 1919 a team led by English astronomer Arthur (later Sir Arthur) Eddington took photographs of stars in the constellation Taurus from an observatory on the island of Principe, off the coast of west Africa.  Although the pictures were of poor quality, they seemed to show the bending of light that Einstein’s theory had predicted.  When the results were published, the Newtonian model of the universe was smashed and Einstein would now be world famous as the creator of a new physics.  Even so, elements of relativity were not universally accepted, and so when Albert Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics it was not for his controversial relativity theories, but for his work explaining the photoelectric effect.

In 1914 Einstein’s wife Maríc left him when she discovered that Albert, when they were living in Berlin, had become romantically involved with his divorcée cousin Elsa Einstein Lowenthal.  (Elsa’s mother was the sister of Albert’s mother and her father was a cousin of Albert’s father).  Albert and Maríc divorced in February of 1919 and a few months later the 40-year old Albert married the 42-year old Elsa.  She was his supportive wife, protector, and gatekeeper.  When she became fatally ill, Albert was distraught, but rather than being at her side he immersed himself in work so he wouldn’t have to brood over her suffering.  Heart and kidney ailments took Elsa’s life in December 1936.

During the the 1920s Einstein, an international celebrity, toured the world and was received with acclaim wherever he went, England, Spain, the United States, Palestine, even the Far East.  He wrote of his travels, expressing positive views of America and Japan, but negative views of China that would be regarded today as racist.  In 1930 Einstein returned to America, where he was treated like royalty or a movie star.  He travelled not only to New York but to California, where, in Hollywood, he struck up a fast friendship with great English comedian, actor, and film auteur Charlie Chaplin, a fellow pacifist.  (Chaplin would visit him in Germany).

Einstein was visiting America again in February of 1933 when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power in Germany.  Einstein had no attention of living under a fascist regime and realized that he as a Jew and a propagator of the new “Jewish” science he would no longer have a place in German society and would even be in physical danger.  He learned that his property in Germany had already been confiscated and that the cottage he owned was being converted into a Nazi Youth camp.  And so in March of 1933 he turned his passport into the Germany consulate at Antwerp, Belgium, thus renouncing his German citizenship.  As a refugee, Einstein would live temporarily in Belgium and England.   While the Nazi government burned his books and placed a price on his head, Einstein was more concerned about the other Jewish scientists and teachers in Germany who were now unemployed and subject to persecution.  While in England, he asked for help from an anti-Nazi member of parliament, Winston Churchill.   Churchill, who would become Britain’s Prime Minister during World War II, used his influence to bring many Jewish scientists to England.  Einstein lobbied other governments for assistance.  Another country that responded positively was Turkey, which received over a thousand Jewish scientists.

When plans for him to be granted British citizenship fell through, Einstein decided to immigrate to the United States, whose values and freedoms, and whose encouragement of individual achievement and creativity he greatly admired.  He had been tendered an offer from Princeton University in New Jersey to join it as a resident scholar at its Institute for Advanced Study. Turning down other offers from universities in Europe, Einstein accepted the position at Princeton in 1935.   Happy to settle there permanently, Einstein applied for American citizenship, which was granted in 1940.

At Princeton Einstein primarily worked on formulating equations that would establish a provable unified field theory that would bring into a single framework the four universal and fundamental forces, the strong  and weak nuclear forces, gravity, and electromagnetism.  (It had long since been discovered that electricity and magnetism were related).  He also worked on reinterpreting quantum physics, which attempts to describe the behavior of atomic and subatomic particles.   It had been developed as a distinct branch of science in the mid 1920s by Niels Bohr, a nuclear physicist from Denmark and Werner Heisenberg, a German scientist who was his student.  (Heisenberg is also famous for his uncertainty principle, which states that the more precisely the position of a particle can be known, the less precisely can its momentum be determined, and vice versa).  At a 1941 war-time meeting between Heisenberg and his old teacher Bohr in Copenhagen, there was established the accepted interpretation of quantum physics, an interpretation that Einstein sought to refute.  Despite working on both projects over the next twenty years, Einstein produced few results.

Albert Einstein did not demure to speak out about the political and social issues of his new country.  He used his fame for good causes, but at the same time retained an endearing, child-like innocence.   He decried racism and was a member of the NAACP.   He campaigned actively and vocally for civil rights and social justice. He also promoted Jewish causes.  (A non-observant Jew, he believed in the concept of a God, but not in a personal one).  After World War II, he supported the founding of the nation of Israel and, in 1952, was offered the ceremonial role of president, which he reluctantly declined.   Einsteins’ political views were quite far left.  He favored socialism and a world government; his criticism of capitalism led the suspicious FBI to keep a substantial file on him. 

A refuge from his work and all the demands placed upon him was his music, for which he long had great affection.  He was a more than competent classical violinist and declared that he found great personal pleasure in playing.  Once in a while he had the opportunity to perform with professionals; he did not embarrass himself.

In late 1938 Germans scientists had achieved nuclear fission of the radioactive element uranium.   When it was discovered that this fission (the splitting of the atomic nucleus) could result in a chain reaction and a powerful release of energy, it was theorized that it could fuel a bomb of tremendous power.   Many thought that Germany was not a threat to build a bomb because it did not possess the requisite quantity of the uranium isotope U-235, which is needed for fission.  But, in fact, by April 1939 Germany had taken the first, faltering steps toward the establishment of a nuclear weapons program.
 
In 1939 a group of Hungarian scientists led by physicist Leó Szilárd and including Edward Teller, later the father of the H-bomb, endeavored to warn the United States government of Germany’s ambition to build an atomic bomb.  The Hungarians, though, found they lacked sufficient clout to be listened to seriously.  Szilárd approached Albert Einstein, whom he had known and worked with in the mid 1920s — they had invented a refrigerator together.    Einstein hadn’t even considered the possibility of an atomic bomb and was alarmed by the thought of Hitler possessing such a weapon.  He volunteered to help make the government aware of this potentially catastrophic situation.  A letter to President Roosevelt urging that the United States, in self-defense, initiate its own nuclear program, was composed, and Einstein signed it.  The Einstein-Szilárd letter was delivered on August 9, 1939.  President Roosevelt received it and realizing its importance, acted on it.  Eventually the Manhattan Project was established.  Its goal, the development of an atomic bomb, was achieved in July 16, 1945 when the first nuclear weapon was detonated in White Sands, New Mexico.  On August 5th and 9th, respectively, two types of atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, resulting in devastating destruction, precipitating a Japanese surrender, and bringing World War II to an end.

Albert Einstein, whose pacifist views made him a security risk, did not work on the Manhattan Project or on any other project connected with the war — nor did he wish to.  It may seem odd that he was not eager to actively join the fight against a nation that was committed to exterminating his race, but Einstein felt it would be a violation of his staunchly held pacifist principles.  In later life he even half regretted his signal contribution to the war effort, the letter to Roosevelt.

In later life Einstein was revered and beloved and was the icon of the benign, wise scientist, an exemplar of humanity.  He remained  at Princeton University and worked even as he entered the hospital on April 17, 1955 for treatment of a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm.  Surgery was recommended for his condition, but Einstein refused, saying  “I want to go when I want.  It is tasteless to prolong life artificially.  I have done my share; it is time to go.  I will do it elegantly.”   He did so, passing away the next day, on April 18, 1955.  His body was cremated and his remarkable brain was preserved.

Portrait of Mary Queen of Scots

 Mary Queen of Scots  36 x 24 inches  Acrylic on Cradled Gessobord

Mary Queen of Scots  (1542-1587)  When 30-year old James V Stewart of Scotland died of illness in 1542, after the failure of his war with England, he left the crown to his newborn daughter Mary, his only legitimate child.  King Henry VIII of England, Mary’s great uncle, demanded that she be betrothed to his son Edward, but the Scottish parliament rejected the offer.  Henry initiated a policy of “rough wooing” mounting raids into Scottish territory and harassing its merchants.  The infant Mary was moved from place to place for her safety.  Henry VIII died, though, in January 1547 before he could obtain a Scottish wife for his son.  The French king, Henry II, stepped in.  He offered an alliance with Scotland with Mary’s betrothal to his son Francis, just a year younger than Mary, to seal the bargain.

Leaving her mother Mary of Guise in Scotland, Mary was thus conveyed to France to be brought up by her mother’s relatives at the court of France.  She remained there until the time she was 18.  Under the guardianship of her uncle and grandmother, she was given a good education, learned Latin and Greek, French, of course, and Italian and Spanish.  (Her native tongue was Scots; it is not reported if she knew English as well, but one presumes so). She would establish her own court about her with Scottish ladies-in-waiting that were her own age and of the noblest families in Scotland.  There were four of them, all named Mary — Beaton, Seaton, Fleming, and Livingston, “The Four Marys.”  Mary Stewart (now styled “Stuart”) developed an appreciation for music and poetry and mastered horsemanship, often riding astride as few women dared.  She was a mentally quick, vivacious, and a pretty child.  And she grew into a very attractive woman, charming, graceful, athletic, and tall — almost six foot, unusual at that time.  Like much of British royalty at that time (Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon, King Edward VI, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth) she had red/auburn hair.

She and her betrothed, Francis, the eldest son of King Henry II and Catherine de Medici, developed a deep affection for one another in childhood and into adolescence.  As was the custom, they married young.  On April 24, 1558 they were wed at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.   At age sixteen Mary had became the Dauphine of France and Francis, the King Consort of Scotland.  Their marriage was happy, but not fruitful.  Francis had not matured normally and remained weak and sickly.  His growth was stunted; he was very shy and stuttered.  It is believed that because of a birth defect he was infertile, nor is it certain that their marriage was ever consummated. 

On July 10, 1559 King Henry II painful expired after receiving a lance in the face during a jousting tournament.  Francis ascended to the throne and while, at 15, he was considered an adult, it was thought best that the reins of government rest in other hands.  The Guise family assumed the regency, but they were neither popular nor successful in ruling France, which was plagued by conflicts between Catholics and Protestants.  On December 5, 1560, after a reign of only 17 months, King Francis II died, owing to an ear infection of some sort.  His mentally unbalanced younger brother Charles succeeded to the throne with his mother, Catherine de Medici as regent. 

After 6 months of mourning, Mary returned to Scotland with the intent of assuming rule of the state.  Her mother had died in June of 1560.  But landing at Leith, the capital and port of Edinburgh, she was not greeted with open arms.  Less a Queen of Scots, she was a foreigner, a French woman (and indeed her genealogy reveals that she was actually not all that Scottish). Leaving it as a small child, she had never known the country.  Its society was in turmoil, torn like that of England and France between Catholics and Protestants. 

Probably wary of introducing too much disruptive change, Mary acquiesced to the Protestants who had been ruling Scotland.  She retained her illegitimate half-brother, James Stewart, the Earl of Moray, a Protestant, as her chief advisor, along with a privy council that was mostly Protestant as well.  Her Catholic supporters were deeply disappointed by these actions.

The austere and influential Protestant reformer John Knox, now considered the founder of the Presbyterian Church, preached against her and condemned her for dancing, for wearing elegant clothes — and for being a Catholic.  She tried to reason with the man, but failing, charged him with treason.  He was acquitted.

Single, Mary sorted through several matrimonial offers, from England, Austria, and Spain.  There were, in fact, few really good offers and, in the end, Mary ended up marrying for love. 
She had met her Anglicized Catholic cousin, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley in France.  The son of the Earl of Lennox, who was a power in Scotland and England, he seemed an ideal match and, having fallen in love with him, Mary would brook no dissent.  On July 29, 1565 Mary Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley were married at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh.  The marriage ceremony was a Catholic one, although no one seemed to notice that it was a patently illegitimate one, since papal dispensation for the union of first cousins had not been granted.

The Darnley marriage angered Queen Elizabeth of England, who felt her permission should have been sought.   In 1558 the Protestant Elizabeth had assumed the throne of England after the death of the Catholic Mary.  Like “Bloody” Mary Tudor, Elizabeth was a daughter of King Henry VIII, but her mother, Anne Boleyn, was not regarded by Catholics as having been legally married to Henry.  Elizabeth, therefore, was not a legitimate queen.  Mary Queen of Scots, being a great-granddaughter of Henry VII, was instead seen as the rightful monarch of England.  The Protestants rulers of Scotland had signed a treaty with England accepting Elizabeth as queen, though, but Mary had not accepted it.

Marriage to a Catholic outraged the Earl of Moray so much that he and other Protestant earls openly rebelled against Mary’s reign.  Moray’s troops entered Edinburgh, but were rebuffed.  In what came to known as the Chaseabout Raid, the Queen’s troops pursued the Protestant forces, but never actually engaged them in battle.  Mary received further support when the 4th Earl of Bothwell, James Hepburn, a former Lord High Admiral of Scotland, returned from exile in France.  The Earl of Moray, on the other hand sought exile in England.  Free of him, Mary reorganized her privy council and made it more Catholic, although she would later reconcile with Moray and reinstate some of the rebel Protestants.

By this time, Mary had fallen out of love with Lord Darnley, who arrogantly demanded kingly powers and was refused them.  Mary became pregnant, but Darnley jealously suspected the father might be one David Rizzo, an Italian courtier who was a particular friend of the Queen and her private secretary.  Conspiring with some Protestant nobles, Darnley got rid of Rizzo by murdering him in front of Mary at a dinner party in the palace.  A couple months later, on June 19, 1566, the child James was born, but the murder of Rizzo was not forgotten and the marriage was doomed.  Mary met with her nobles to discuss what to do about the unwanted Darnley, divorce him or what.  Darnley feared for his life and left Edinburgh, but when falling ill, was forced to return.  He stayed at a former abbey to recuperate.  Early on the morning of February 10, 1567 the abbey was blown up and Darnley was found dead.  He was obviously murdered, but by whom history has not determined.  Some suspected Mary of the act, although it appeared that at the time of his death they were just becoming reconciled.  She, however, invited suspicion by playing golf a few days after her husband’s death.  (Mary was an avid golfer and had even played the game in France).   Suspicion also fell upon Moray and upon the Earl of Bothwell, who soon became the consensus choice for the murderous deed.

Bothwell was eventually charged with the crime, but with no evidence against him, he was acquitted in a trial held on April 12, 1568.  Encouraged, Bothwell secured the approval of several nobles and bishops for his plan to marry the now widowed queen.  As a first step Bothwell hastily divorced his second wife.  When Mary went to Stirling to visit her young son, Bothwell seized his opportunity.  While she was riding back to Edinburgh, he and his men abducted her and took her to Dunbar Castle.  There he claimed her as his wife, following an ancient Scottish custom that if a man elopes with a woman and spends the night with her the two are considered legally married.  Whether Mary was compliant or complicit in the abduction is not known. But days later they were married under Protestant rites in Edinburgh.  

The tempestuous marriage, which quickly soured, was wildly unpopular with the Scottish people.  Protestants resented a potential Catholic king.  Catholics questioned its legality, since Bothwell may not have been properly divorced from his first wife and, besides, the ceremony had been performed with Protestant rites.  Others were aghast that the queen could marry her husband’s murderer.  And the nobility resented the newly acquired power of the roguish Bothwell, who was granted the title of the Duke of Orkney. 

A rebellion of the Scottish nobles against Mary and Bothwell was organized.  They raised an army that confronted that of Mary at Carberry Hill, just outside Edinburgh.  There was no real battle, for most of Mary’s army deserted or left the field.  The rebellion was a success.  Mary was brought to Edinburgh where she was reviled as an adulterer and a murderess.  Imprisoned in Loch Leven Castle, she was forced to abdicate in favor of her infant son James.  The Earl of Moray became the regent of Scotland.  The Earl of Bothwell, escaped from the field of battle, fled Scotland, but was arrested in Norway and died insane in 1678 after long confinement in a castle prison in Denmark.

Mary managed to escape from Loch Leven Castle and muster a sizable army, but it was inadequate to defeat the smaller forces of Moray.  In May of 1568 Mary slipped into England where she foolishly hoped her cousin Queen Elizabeth would help her regain her throne.  Instead, Mary was confined on the pretext of a need to inquire into her part in the murder of Lord Darnley.  Documents supposedly written by her and known as the casket letters (perhaps authentic, perhaps forged) were produced to implicate her.  A trial was held, but ended without either exonerating Mary or condemning her.  This was part of the canny Queen Elizabeth’s plan: she wanted to neutralize Mary as a threat without antagonizing her supporters.  The Earl of Shrewsbury and his wife, Bess of Hardwick were charged to take custody of Mary, erstwhile Queen of Scots.  They held her under house arrest at their several properties safely located in the center of England.  She, however, was able to live quite comfortably, if not grandly with her own staff and possessions for what turned out to be 19 years.  Elizabeth was afraid of Mary, probably jealous of her charm and good looks, and made a point of never meeting her.

 A civil war raged in Scotland for several years between Mary’s partisans and the Protestant regency.  In 1569 Catholic nobleman from northern England, mostly those of the once powerful Neville and Percy families, attempted to depose Elizabeth in favor of Mary, Queen of Scots.  This rebellion, called the Rising of the North, totally failed and the participants came to a bad end.  There were several subsequent plots on the part of Catholic players and powers to place Mary on the throne of England.

In 1586 the Babington Plot, named after Catholic English nobleman Anthony Babington, aspired to assassinate Queen Elizabeth and bring in a Spanish army to place Mary Stuart on the throne.  Spies had confiscated some letters written by Mary that countenanced the plot.  Therefore, in October 1586, she was formally put on trial for treason before a jury of 36 noblemen.  By this time her health had diminished and she was nearly crippled by rheumatism.  Nevertheless Mary presented a vehement defense and insisted that she could not be guilty of treason since she was not an English subject.  Predictably, Mary was pronounced guilty by 35 of her jurors.  Queen Elizabeth was desirous of sparing her cousin and it was with reluctance that she signed her death warrant on February 1, 1587.

Mary faced her end courageously.  Her last words were, “Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit,” in, of course, Latin.  Blindfolded, Mary, Queen of Scots, knelt down on a cushion before a chopping block reached by two or three steps.  It was not a neat job: the headsman needed more than one stroke to severe her head.  When her head was raised up, a red wig fell off revealing short gray hair.  It was also discovered that Mary’s pet Skye terrier, from which she had refused to be parted, was hiding among her clothes. 

Queen Elizabeth denied that she had ordered the execution and even imprisoned for a time the man charged with carrying it out.  Abroad, Catholic countries were outraged. It provided the excuse for Spain to attempt an invasion of English, but the Spanish Armada of 1588 was doomed by superior English ships, bad weather, and incompetence.  With the death of the childless Elizabeth, the throne of England (as well as Scotland) passed to Mary Stuart’s son, the devoutly Protestant James, in 1603.  All subsequent sovereigns of England were descended from him and his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots.

However ineffective as a monarch she might have been, Mary is remembered not only as a tragic figure, but as a gallant lady.  She has been the subject of many biographies and literary works as well as films in which she has been portrayed by Katharine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave, Saoirse Ronan, and many others

Portrait of Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla  18 x 24 inches  Acrylic on Cradled panel

Nikola Tesla (1856 - 1943)  was an electrical engineer and inventor who was one of world’s greatest geniuses.  He was born of a Serbian family in what is now Croatia, but was then a part of the Austrian Empire.  His father was an orthodox priest.  His mother, though uneducated, had a photographic memory and a talent for invention, traits Nikola inherited.  An elder brother was brilliant intellectually, but died in a riding accident when Nikola was still a small child.

It does not seem Nikola Tesla’s genius was fully recognized in his childhood.  But in high school his teachers were puzzled by his incredible memory.  Tesla claimed that he was able to memorize whole books and during childhood and, to some extent, later, was able to see before his eyes, as if real, objects when their name was spoken.  He also professed to be endowed with phenomenal hearing and sight.  Several times in his youth he narrowly escaped death in accidents and illness.  For example, in 1873, returning home after finishing a four-year high school in three years, he contracted cholera and was at the point of death.  His father, who had always insisted that Nikola become a priest, relented on his son’s sick bed and supported his aspiration to be an engineer.  As if by a miracle, Nikola then quickly recovered.

In 1874 Nikola evaded being drafted into the Austrian army by removing himself to a remote mountain town.  There he took up hiking and found communing with nature beneficial to both his mind and his body.  He continued his program of voracious reading.  His favorite author was Mark Twain, a man he would later meet and befriend.  He believed Twain’s books had been instrumental in his recovery from cholera.

He enrolled on a scholarship at Austrian Polytechnic in Graz, Austria in 1875.  In his first year he was the star pupil.  He studied from 3 AM to 11 PM, working feverishly every day, never taking a day off and sleeping little.  His professors were worried that he would kill himself with over work.  In his second year he got into trouble for knowing more than his instructors.   Losing his scholarship, he tried to acquire income through gambling.  He spent his third year in college addicted to gambling, losing all the money his parents had sent him.  After recouping his losses, he eventually conquered his passion for gambling.  His addiction, though, had left him unprepared to take his examinations and he was forced to leave school without graduating.  He left Graz in 1878 and hid out in the Slovenia town of Maribor, where he got a job as a draftsman.  He was ashamed to tell his parents he had left school, but in March of 1879 his father found him and begged him to come home.  The younger Tesla refused, but after suffering something like a nervous breakdown, he was escorted home by the police.

In 1879 Tesla’s father died.  Nikola found employment as a teacher.  His uncles, though, got enough money together to send him to complete his college education at the Charles- Ferdinand University in Prague.  It seemed ill advised: Nikola knew no Czech or Greek, required studies.  Although he attended lectures, he received no course credit. 

The next year found him in Budapest, Hungary, where he was hired by the Budapest Telephone Exchange, which was not yet operative.   Instead he began work at the telegraph office, but when the telephone exchange opened, he was made its chief electrician.  Tesla had long been fascinated by electricity and it would be that his life would be devoted to its exploitation.  He apparently got the exchange working, making many improvements in its equipment.

In 1882 a big break for Nikola Tesla was the securing of a job in Paris working for the Continental Edison Company, which was  installing electric lights throughout the city.  Tesla impressed his bosses with his ability to repair and even redesign the mechanisms and apparatuses connected with the generation and transmission of electricity.  As a troubleshooter he was sent to Edison facilities all over France and Germany.

When Charles Batchelor, the Edison executive overseeing the electrification of Paris, was called back to America in June 1884, he brought Nikola Tesla with him.  Tesla found himself working at the Edison Machine Shop in Manhattan with hundreds of others.  He repaired dynamos and designed a system for arc lighting that could be used for street lights — which was not used.  It is unclear why he left’s Edison’s employ after only six months.  It is probably because his ideas were ignored and not because of an apocryphal story about his being denied promised bonuses.  At any rate, Tesla, who must have met Thomas Edison at least a few times, did not hold his former boss in high regard.  For one thing, Edison disparaged his rivals and any idea that was not his own.  Tesla was always willing to learn from others and was quick to discard ideas that he found did not work.  Tesla, who was always fastidious in his dress and grooming,  found Edison’s slovenliness offensive and deplored the fact that the man, obsessed only with his inventions, had no outside interest or hobbies.

Tesla perfected and patented a system for arc lighting using an improved direct current (DC) generator.  In 1885 two businessmen stepped forward to back Tesla and financed the Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing Company in Rahway, New Jersey, where the system was to be installed.  But Tesla was now developing new equipment using alternating rather than direct current. His backers, though, were not interested in new inventions.  Consequently, they left Tesla in the lurch, took his patents and founded a new company without him.  Nikola was left penniless and throughout most of 1886 he struggled to support himself, sometimes by working as a ditch digger for $2 a day.

But by the end of 1886 Nikola Tesla, now 30, met two men who were interested in his inventions, Alfred S. Brown, formerly of Western Union, and Charles F. Peck, an attorney.  Together they formed the Tesla Electric Company in April of 1887.  In his Manhattan laboratory Tesla developed a functioning induction motor (using a magnetic field).  It ran on alternating current, which is safer than direct current and can be transmitted long distances, since its voltage can be stepped up and stepped down through the use of transformers.  George Westinghouse, an inventor and businessman, was looking for such an AC motor for his business, The Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, which was planning to implement AC, rather than DC in its electrification projects.  Tesla’s partners negotiated a favorable licensing agreement with Westinghouse.  Money, stock, and royalties were given for Tesla’s AC induction motor and transformer designs and Tesla was to work as a consultant to Westinghouse with a munificent salary approximating $600,000 per year (in todays’ money).

Working with Westinghouse’s engineers in Pittsburgh, Tesla’s first task was to figure out how to run Pittsburgh’s streetcars with alternating current.  Problems arouse.  Tesla’s AC motor could only run at a constant speed; streetcars required a motor that could run at various speeds.  Therefore a DC traction motor had to be used instead.  (Induction motors are used today in appliances, while traction motors are used in electrically powered vehicles).  Indeed, Tesla’s vaunted induction motor had not been perfected and no real use had been found for it.

During this time there raged what is known as the “War of the Currents,” to resolve whether the direct current championed by Edison was better than the alternating current advocated by Westinghouse.  It was an expensive, cut-throat  propaganda war among the three top electric companies, Edison, Westinghouse, and Thomson-Houston.  Westinghouse, who would eventually win the war with the near universal acceptance of alternating current, was in financial straits by the time of the financial panic of 1890.  Not wanting to drive Westinghouse into bankruptcy, Tesla agreed to release Westinghouse from its royalty agreement.  (He later sold the patent to his motor for a large lump sum, as part of a patent-sharing agreement between Westinghouse and General Electric, a new company that resulted from the merger of Edison and Thomson-Houston in 1892).

Nikola Tesla, as a result of his otherwise disappointing relationship with Westinghouse, had become independently wealthy and by 1889 was able to work on his own projects out a series of laboratories in Manhattan.    At this time, he invented the famous Tesla coil, patented in 1891, the same year that Tesla became a naturalized US citizen.  The Tesla coil, which produces lightning-like brush discharges, was a transformer capable of producing high voltage, low current electricity.  It would have its major use in radio transmission.  (Today it is used for entertainment purposes and was a standard feature laboratories in mad -doctor movies).

He also developed an electrical generator using steam power, but it ended up being impractical.  It, however, was part of the World’s Columbia Exposition, held in 1893 in Chicago.  The exposition was lighted by AC current, courtesy of Westinghouse, a triumph for the company and for the cause of AC.   Representing Westinghouse, Nikola Tesla, a star performer, wowed audiences by demonstrating his wireless lighting system and the so-called Egg of Columbus. (A magnetic field produced by an induction motor, created a gyroscope effect that made a copper egg stand on end and spin — as well as other effects).

In 1895 a new company, The Nikola Tesla Company, was set up to market Tesla’s old and new patents, but the venture attracted few investors and the company was not very successful.  In March 1895 a devastating blow was dealt to Tesla when the building in which his laboratory was housed burned down.   His current projects, models and prototypes, as well as notes on former experiments were all lost.  Tesla could only shrug his shoulders and start again in a new laboratory.

In 1894 Tesla seemed to have discovered X-rays before Wilhelm Röntgen, but it was the German scientist who announced his discovery first.  In 1898 he demonstrated that a boat could be controlled by remote control, but his idea for a radio-controlled torpedo did not interest the US military.  The concept would be developed decades later.  Tesla developed much of the apparatus needed for wireless telegraphy, but it was the Italian inventor, Guglielmo Marconi who is credited with inventing radio.  Tesla would sue the Marconi Company in 1915 for violation of his patents concerning wireless tuning, but lost.  (Ironically, in 1943 the Supreme Court restored to Tesla and others patents that had been initially awarded to Marconi).

Nikola Tesla’s major project, the wireless transmission of electricity,  was inspired by his belief that the atmosphere or the earth itself could be made to be a conductor of electricity.  In 1899 he set up a laboratory in the high altitude of Colorado Springs.  He persuaded John Jacob Astor to invest in his company, ostensibly to develop a system for wireless lighting.  Tesla, though, used the money to experiment with global transmission of radio signals.  He created monumental coils and used vast amounts of electricity (given to him free of charge by the El Paso Power Company).  He succeeded in creating artificial lightning and thunder.   That confirmed to him the erroneous belief that the atmosphere was a conductor.  But there were no radio transmissions.

During his experiments, though,  his receiver picked up radio signals that he surmised might have been transmitted from another planet.  The press — and Tesla was always good press — sensationalized it and there were stories about messages from Mars.  (These signals remain unexplained, although a tenuous explanation that they can be attributed to Marconi’s early experiments has been offered).

Back in New York and living at the Waldorf, Tesla was able to raise money (the equivalent of  4.5 million dollars) from J. P. Morgan to develop a system of wireless transmission.  In Shoreham, New York on Long Island he build the 187- foot high Wardenclyffe Tower.  His experiments seemed promising, but it was Marconi who in December 1901 made the the first transcontinental wireless transmission from London to Newfoundland.  Tesla continued with his experiments, but Morgan lost interest and refused to fund him further. 

Tesla  kept going at Wardenclyffe until 1905, but to pay a debt to the Waldorf, which amounted to a staggering half a million dollars in today’s money, he was forced to mortgage the property.  (In 1915 he lost it through foreclosure).  He relentlessly importuning  J.P. Morgan and, later, his son for money, but without success.

Following the failure at Wardenclyffe, Tesla opened a succession of offices in New York endeavoring to raise money by marketing his patents.  Few of his inventions could be developed, although he did work with various companies on them.   One, a blade-less turbine, had possibilities, but it usefulness was limited.  Another idea, for a vertical take-off biplane, was deemed impractical.  Among investors and with the press Tesla was gaining a reputation as an obsessive crank, even a fraud.  More and more Tesla’s ideas were becoming merely theoretical — and fanciful, motors running on cosmic rays, electric waves that detect submarines, and a death ray that would end war.  Early in his career, he was years, even decades ahead of his time.  In old age his ideas seemed mere science fiction, while his science was behind the times; eg. he espoused eugenics, denied the existence of subatomic particles, and rejected Einstein’s theories of relativity even as they were being proved true.

Through the 1920s and ’30s Nikola Tesla lived in various New York hotels, running up huge bills and then being forced to leave to search for another residence.  His means of income was vanishing and he was reduced to indigence.  Happily, in 1934, as a gracious gesture, the Westinghouse Company agreed paid his rent for the rest of his life and granted him a $125 per month allowance.

In 1931 a 75th birthday party was arranged for him and a man almost forgotten was remembered, with birthday wishes from the greats in science and a Times magazine cover story.  Tesla enjoyed it immensely and therefore celebrated his birthday every year by inviting friends and the press to visit him and hear him expound upon his past achievements and upon the new inventions he was supposedly developing.  They would fed with food and drink and dishes of his own invention.

Nikola Tesla, tall, slender, elegant, was meticulous in his habits.  He slept little, but walked for ten miles every day.  For many years he dined regularly at Delmonico’s, always at the exact same time, at the same table, and served by the same waiter, except on the occasion when he had dinner guests.  He was not religious, but admired Christianity and Buddhism.  Introverted and reclusive, he nevertheless was very gracious in company, affable and charming.  He moved in the highest circles when he chose to do so.  While he may have seemed the prototype of the mad scientist, he was also the epitome of the cultured gentleman.

In later years Tesla was enamored with pigeons and claimed to have a deep love for a beautiful pigeon with a broken wing that he took a great deal of time and expense to heal.  Nikola liked and admired women, thought they were of the superior sex and would one day be the dominant one.  He, however, had no intimate or romantic relations, which he felt could only be a distraction from his work.  He also felt that he could not be worthy of any woman.  Deploring the mannishness of the ’20’s flapper, he yearned for the dignified women he had known before World War I.  Later in life, he did have some regrets that he did not marry.

In 1937 when Nikola Tesla was making his customary post-midnight trip to the cathedral and the library to feed his beloved pigeons, he was hit by a cab.  This resulted in an injured back and broken ribs, but the extent of his injuries can never known because he refused to have medical treatment.  (It was never his habit to deal with doctors).  It is thought he never quite recovered, and later photos of him show a frail, ghostly figure.  On January 7, 1943 he was found dead in his room in the New Yorker Hotel.  He was given a well attended funeral at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine.  New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia read a eulogy for him over on the radio.

With no relatives living in the country Nikola Tesla’s affects were seized by the government and examined to determine if there was anything that in wartime it might not wish to fall into enemy hands.  A distinguished electrical engineer, Prof. John G. Trump (Uncle of President Donald Trump) concluded that his notes were only speculative and philosophical and contained no workable ideas of value.  Eventually all the items from his estate were shipped to Tesla’s nephew in Belgrade.  His ashes are also now there in the Nikola Tesla Museum.

Portrait of Madame du Barry

 

Madame du Barry 36 x 24 inches, Acrylic on Cradled Gessoboard, 2018 

Madame du Barry (1743 - 1793) was the second-most famous mistress of French king Louis XV (Madame de Pompadour being the most famous).  She was born Jeanne Bécu in Vaucouleur, a town in Lorraine that figures in the story of Joan of Arc.  She was the illegitimate daughter of a seamstress and a friar.  When she was three, a M. Billard-Dumonceaux, a friend (or lover) of her mother’s took her to Paris. Dumonceaux’s mistress took a shine to the girl, doted on her, and assured that she had a decent education in a convent.  After she had “graduated” at the age of 15, Jeanne had difficulty finding permanent employment.  By the time she was 18,  she was engaged as a grisette, a milliner’s assistant at the haberdashery of a Madame Labille. There she befriended Labille’s daughter, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, who became a notable miniaturist and portrait painter.

A beautiful blonde with blue, bedroom eyes, Jeanne attracted the attention of a certain Jean-Baptiste du Barry, who owned a casino and was a procurer to the rich and powerful.  He made her his mistress, installed her in his home, and, under the name of Mademoiselle Lang, launched her career as a courtesan.  Mademoiselle Lange reached the top of her profession and, with clients like the aged Maréchal-Duc de Richelieu, she became the rage of Paris.  Jean du Barry, sporting delusions of grandeur, thought that he could use her be a player in court politics, especially when Jeanne favorably impressed King Louis himself.  He arranged for the king to meet his protégé.  When the king was willing to install her as his titled mistress, du Barry got to work making her acceptable.  In September of 1768 he married Jeanne to his brother, Guillaume, making her the Countess du Barry.  He even crafted a phony birth certificate for her, making her years younger and of noble birth.

The new Countess succeeded in becoming Louis XV’s titled mistress and while she was skilled in delighting the shy, diffident 58-year old king, she could not appear at court until she had been formally presented there.  Richelieu championed  her and eventually coerced a noblewoman into sponsoring her.  After a couple false starts, Madame du Barry was presented at court on April 22, 1769, extravagantly, spectacularly gowned and coiffed.  An impression she did surely make, but most at court still dismissed her as shameless street walker: ladies had to be bribed to share her company.

Jeanne could not aspire to fill the role of her predecessor, Madame de Pompadour, a lady of grace and culture, a patron of the arts and a deft politician.  But she quickly adapted to a life at court, a life of luxury and excess.  She availed upon an indulgent Louis to furnish her with the most extravagant dresses and the most expensive jewels.  The king even bought a black slave boy for her, a Bantu who was named Zamor.  Elegantly attired, Zamor was pampered by Jeanne, and the king liked nothing more than to play with the boy. 

The Countess surprisingly did not let her success go to her head; she never put on airs, she remained generous and good-hearted.  Her charm eventually won over most at court, although, like all king’s mistresses, she acquired enemies as well.  Duc de Choiseul, the influential Minister of Foreign Affairs, whose patron had been Mme de Pompadour,  hated her from the start.  He and his sister, Duchesse de Gramont, a famous salon hostess who coveted her place (despite the fact that she was past 60!), conspired to undermine her in any way they could.  Choiseul, who had overseen the French defeat in the Seven Years’ War, secretly tried to draw France into another war.  Cleverly, Choiseul’s enemies informed Madame du Barry of the particulars of Choisel’s scheme and it was she who told them to King Louis — who was furious.  On Christmas Eve, 1791, the King stripped Duc de Choiseul of his post and exiled him from court along with his sister, the thorn in Mme du Barry’s side.  Choiseul was replaced with a friend of the Countess, Duc d’Aiguillon, a nephew of Richelieu.

After the fall of Choiseul, the Countess du Barry was riding high.  Her family and the du Barry’s were rewarded with titles and incomes; even Jeanne’s mother was made a Marquise!  Jeanne was happy to support artists and indulge her passion for luxurious clothes.  A château at Louveciennes, just west of Paris was purchased and elaborately redecorated for her.  She stayed out of politics for the most part and when she asked a favor of the king it was usually to beg mercy for some malefactor who had gained her sympathy. 

The only false note at court was her relations with the wife of the Dauphin, King Louis’ grandson, the future Louis XVI.  This was the daughter of the Austrian empress, Maria Theresa, Maria Antonia, who would be known in France as Marie Antoinette.  A naive, prudish, and clueless red-headed 14-year old, Marie Antoinette was outraged when she understood that du Barry’s was the king’s mistress.  Detesting such a disreputable woman, she refused to speak to du Barry, in defiance of court etiquette.  It didn’t help that the Duchess de Gramont had been her lady-in-waiting; it was due to du Barry that she had been expelled from court.  Pressure, though, was put on the young Marie Antoinette to acknowledge Mme du Barry, for her continued snubbing of his mistress annoyed the king and even jeopardized Franco-Austrian relations.  Finally, at a ball on New Year’s Eve, 1772 , Maria Antoinette famously murmured in du Barry’s direction, “There are many people at Versailles today.”  Graciously, Jeanne was mollified, everyone else appeased, and a political crisis ended.

Madame du Barry popularity soon waned owing to her extravagance and a sombre tone engulfing the country.    D’Aiguillon’s reformist ministry was not successful and France’s star seem to be falling.  King Louis, growing old, became more morose, brooding about his approaching death and uncharacteristically embracing religion.  He seldom came to Jeanne’s bed chamber. 

In late April 1774 Louis fell ill.  When it seemed as if he had smallpox, there was little alarm, because he had the disease before and presumably had acquired immunity.   Madame du Barry remained with him, even as the Dauphin and Marie Antoinette were asked to leave.  With what promised to be virulent and most likely fatal case of smallpox, Madame du Barry was finally ordered to leave the King’s side on May 4th.   Hideously disfigured by the disease that afflicted him, King Louis XV died on May, 17, 1774 leaving the French throne to his grandson, the ill-prepared and feckless Louis XVI. 

At the death of the king, Countess du Barry, now 31, was forced into exile, for a time almost a prisoner in a convent 25 miles northeast of Paris.  The nuns there initially did not appreciate a former king’s mistress being thrust upon them, but they were soon won over by Jeanne’s charm.  After a few years Jeanne was given the freedom to live in her beloved château at Louceviennes, where she hosted a salon and engaged in philanthropic enterprises.  In 1786 she received the artist Mme Elisabeth Vigee-LeBrun, who would eventually paint three portraits of her.  She found the former royal mistress living simply, in good health, still pretty and coquettish.   Jeanne acquired two lovers at this period, Henry Seymour, an Englishman politician, and the Duc de Brissac, a soldier and courtier.

When the Revolution began, Madame du Barry found that her beloved servant Zamor, now a man, had joined the radical Jacobin Club.  She discharged him and he, in retaliation, denounced her before the Revolutionary Tribunal.  During 1792 she made several trips to England, smuggling out some of her jewels to help French emigres finding refuge there.  On her last trip she was seriously warned about returning to France.  Since she was not an aristocrat, she foolishly felt she was in no danger.  (She should had remembered that her former lover, Duc de Brissac had been torn apart by a mob and  his severed head tossed through her window).  

When she came back to France she was immediately arrested and charged with treason.  At her trial her chief accuser was Zamor, the servant she had treated so indulgently.  Desperately, she tried to save her life by offering to reveal the hiding places of her gems, but instead she was condemned to death.  On December 8, 1793 she was carted off to the guillotine.  Unlike the stern aristocrats who faced death stoically, she broke down, screamed and cried, protested, begged the crowd for mercy, and had to be dragged up the stairs to the scaffold.  Probably the only victim of the guillotine to arouse the mob’s sympathy even as they were resolved to hate her, she nevertheless lost her head.  She was 50.

Madame du Barry has been portrayed many times on film, by Theda Bara and Pola Negri in silent movies, and later by Norma Talmadge, Dolores del Rio, Gladys George, Margot Grahame, and, most notably, by the only French actress to play her, Martine Carol.