Portrait of Leif Erikson

Leif Erikson 18 x 24 inches Acrylic 2019

Leif Erikson (970 - 1020)  is considered to be the first European to set foot on the North American continent, doing so hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus opened up the Americas to exploration and colonization.  (There are numerous other claimants to this achievement, but none widely accepted). 

Leif’s grandfather Thorvald Ásvaldsson was exiled from Norway in about 960, during the reign of King Haakon the Good.  Apparently he had killed several people and as punishment was exiled to Iceland, a large island to the west that had been discovered by Thorvald’s great grandfather’s brother and was now a thriving Norse settlement.  Accompanying Thorvald was his 10 year old son Erik the Red (red referring to the color of his hair and beard).  

Around 982 Erik the Red was sentenced to three years in exile for killing the man who had slain several of his thralls (slaves).  He consequently left Iceland and sailed west, reaching  a huge land mass that had yet to be thoroughly explored or successfully settled.  He spent his three years in exile there and when he returned to Iceland he promoted settlement of the land that he called “Greenland” (the name stuck).    With arable land in Iceland running out, he was able to attract many potential colonists and led a fleet of 25 ships to Greenland.  Although only 14 of the ships reached Greenland, two permanent settlements were established there on the southwest coast.  Its population soon reached a few thousand individuals.  Erik the Red established himself as the chieftain of the so-called Eastern Settlement and became an honored and wealthy man.

Among the four children of Erik the Red and his wife Thjodhild (a descendant of an Irish king) was Leif, who earned th epithet, “the Lucky.”  Leif grew up in Greenland, but Erik was a mostly absent parent.  Leif was raised by his father’s thrall, Tyrker, who, not Norse, may have been of Germanic, Slavic, or even Hungarian derivation. 

In 999 is when we first hear of Leif Erikson.  He set sail at that time for Norway, but blown off course, he landed in the Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland.  Staying there for the summer, he fell in love with a noblewoman named Thorgunna, who bore him a son.  Marriage with her was not practical, but she did eventually send their son, Thorgils, to Greenland. 

At last arriving in Norway, Leif was presented to King Olaf Tryggvason at his capital of Trondheim and became his hirdman, one of his retinue of warriors and household companions.  It was there that Leif, to please his king, converted to Christianity, renouncing the traditional Norse religion, which featured the gods Thor, Odin, Freyr, and so forth.  King Olaf succeeded in what his predecessor King Haakon had tried but failed to do, convert the people of Norway to the Christian religion, even if Olaf often had to do it forcibly. 

Leif Erikson returned to Greenland in the spring, but on the voyage back home his ship was blown off course and ended up farther west that was intended.  Leif and his men saw a strange uncharted land that had reportedly been glimpsed many years before by an Icelandic merchant named Bjarni Herjólfsson on his voyage to Greenland.  Erikson rescued some shipwrecked seamen who also claimed to have seen this land.  Significantly, the land sighted by Erikson and Herjólfsson was forested.  Greenlanders, who lacked timber, were, therefore, interested.  So was Leif.  Possessed by the curiosity of the explorer, which many Norsemen of the time were amply endowed with, he was determined to find it again.  With the support of the Greenlanders, he mounted an expedition to voyage farther west and explore the newly found land.  He recruited a crew of 35 men and purchased the very boat Bjarni Herjólfsson had sailed in when he had made his sighting.   Erik the Red had been persuaded to join the expedition, but when he fell off his horse riding to the ship, he begged off, deciding the omens were against him.

The Greenland explorers set out in the fall of 1000 or 1001.  The voyage of Leif Erikson was indeed successful.  He made landfall first at what was probably Baffin Island, a rocky, desolate place he named Helluland (flat-rock land).  Continuing south and west he landed on a  country well forested.  He dubbed it Markland (forest land).  This was probably Labrador on the coast of what is now Canada.  Next, two days sailing to the south, he found country where the climate was milder, the landscape lusher, and the waters teeming with salmon.  Here he decided to stop and spend the winter.  Half of his men, though, led by Tyrker, were sent out to conduct explorations.  It was Tyrker who found a welcoming land distinguished by its vines and grapes.  The Norse moved there to winter and named it Vinland  (land of vines).  The settlement built there was later called Leifsbudir (Leif’s booths).  It was probably located on the tip of the northern peninsula of the island of Newfoundland.

With a cargo of timber and grapes, Leif Erikson returned  to Greenland in the spring.  He then followed through with his mission to Christianize the country.  Erikson, perceived as a man of strength, character, and wisdom, was respected and listened to when he brought word of this new religion.  Therefore, he was generally successful in his efforts to convert the people of Greenland to Christianity, (although it is probable Christianity had already taken root there).  His mother was quick to embrace the new religion and had a Christian church built, but his father, Erik the Red, rejected it and stubbornly clung to his belief in the old Norse deities.  (As a result of this religious disagreement between husband and wife, Thjodhild denied Erik her bed).

Vinland was visited by other Norsemen, but problems arouse when contact was made with the native Inuit inhabitants, who the Norse called skraelings.  Many of these encounters were hostile.  Leif’s brother Thorvald first came upon them in 1004.  Armed conflict resulted and Thorvald was killed.  Trade was conducted with the skraelings, but any future settlements were imperiled by their general hostility to foreigners.  It is conjectural how many further Norse settlements were made in America or how far from Vinland they might have been.  It is established that for centuries after Norsemen did make expeditions to Markland, particularly to acquire timber.  It was probably an open secret among mariners that such lands did exists to the west, although after the abandonment of the Norse settlements, no one deemed it worthwhile to travel there.  Christopher Columbus visited to Iceland in 1477 and may have been privy to and inspired by stories of Vinland and lands to the west.

 The last Norse settlements in Greenland were abandoned in the early 14th Century and the onset of the Little Ice Age made the island virtually uninhabitable due to the lower temperatures and the consequent inability to grow crops there.  Other factors, though, are believed to have contributed to decline of Norse Greenland.

It is not certain how many voyages Leif Erikson might have made to Vinland.  After the death of his father from the plague in 1004 he assumed a role as chieftain in Greenland and probably remained there after that time. The date of Leif Erikson’s death is uncertain, sometime between 1019 and 1025.  He was succeeded as chieftain by his son Thorkell.  (The identity of Thorkell’s mother is not known).

Icelandic sagas written in the 13th Century are primary sources for accounts of Erik the Red and Leif Erikson.  But there are some earlier, more reliably historical accounts such as that of Adam of Bremen, a German scholar who wrote in the late 11th Century.   Norse discovery of the New World  would eventually be corroborated by archaeology.  In the early 1960s Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad and his archaeologist wife Anne Stine uncovered remains of a Norse settlement dated to 1000 AD in the northern tip of Newfoundland at a place known as L’Anse aux Meadows.  It was probably the site of Leifsbudir.  While further archaeological evidence suggest that Vinland was in the Gulf of St. Lawrence area, its location remains a matter of controversy.  Cape Cod, for instance, is believed by some to be the Norse Vinland.   There are, in fact, many theories regarding the extent of the Norse presence in America, some supported by evidence that is intriguing, but others based upon dubious, even spurious assumptions.

Nothing is known of Leif’s appearance.  We know that he had a grandson, but no further descendants have been identified.  Leif Erikson, though, remains an iconic hero, especially to Scandinavians in America.  Sometimes cast as a competitor to Columbus, he maintains the advantage of possessing a reputation that is unsullied  — save for the illegitimate Scottish offspring!

Portrait of Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin  18 x 24 inches, Acrylic on Cradled panel, 2019

 Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)  Born Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin, he was an important  post-Impressionistic French painter whose work, though mostly unappreciated in his lifetime,  achieved popularity and critical success after his death and had considerable influence upon 20th Century art. 

Paul was born into a middle class family of social activists.  His father Clovis was a liberal journalist and his maternal grandmother was an author and supporter of the early socialist movement.  When, in 1850, Clovis Gauguin’s newspaper was closed down by the French government, he decided to take his wife Alina and their children to Peru.  His wife’s father was from a Peruvian family of wealth and social standing and could perhaps help them. Unfortunately on the way, Clovis had a heart attack and died.  Nevertheless, Alina Gauguin, with her children, 2  1/2 year-old Marie and 1  1/2 year-old Paul, was well received by her father’s family, whose members included the future president of Peru.  For the next few years the Gauguins would live a life of luxury and privilege.  Paul would be doted on and indulged by servants, an idyllic early childhood that he would never quite let go of.

Unfortunately, the political fortunes of Alina’s family’s  fell and, in 1854, the Gauguins had to return to France, pretty much broke.  Gauguin’s mother supported herself as a dressmaker and left Paul in Orléans to be raised by his paternal grandfather.  Paul was able to attend prestigious schools, including a naval preparatory school in Paris.  Completing his education, Gauguin became a merchant seaman, a pilot’s assistant.  After three years he joined the French navy for a two-year enlistment.  It was while he was in India that he heard of his mother’s death months before.

In 1871 Paul Gauguin returned to Paris and through a family friend obtained employment as a stockbroker.  He was successful and became quite well-to-do.  In 1873 he married Mette-Sophie Gad (1850-1920), a Danish woman, and they had 5 children together.  Gauguin became interested in art and was a regular at the cafes frequented by the Impressionists, who, at that time, were the rebels of the art world.  He began purchasing the work of many of these avant-garde and as yet unheralded artists and came to know most of them personally; Camille Pissarro was a particular friend.  Gauguin himself tried his hand at painting and a little sculpture.  No one seemed to think much of his efforts, but Paul felt compelled to spend more and more of his time with art.  In 1877 he moved from the 9th arrondissement of Paris (on the right bank in central Paris) to a newer, urban area, Vaugirard.   It was a poorer neighborhood, but his 3rd floor apartment had a studio.  Gauguin’s efforts began to bear fruit.  He was beginning to sell his work and was able to exhibit paintings in the Impressionist exhibitions of 1881 and 1882. 

By 1883 stockbroker Paul Gauguin had decided to devote himself to art full time.  He could not have chosen a worse time.  The stock market had crashed the year before and dealers and collectors were buying little art.  In January 1884 Gauguin moved his family to Rouen, where they could live more cheaply than in Paris.  The transition from amateur to professional was a difficult one and it put strains on his family life.   Mette and the children soon moved to Copenhagen in her native country of Denmark.  Gauguin, bringing his art collection, followed in November of 1884.  The restless and frustrated Gauguin got a job selling tarpaulins, but it was an ill-starred venture — Paul didn’t even speak Danish!

Separating from his wife, Gauguin returned to Paris in June 1885, taking with him his 6-year old son (who would eventually have to be sent to a boarding school, paid for by Pauls’ sister).  The upcoming winter was a time of misery.  Paul found no sales, no inspiration, and had to support himself in poverty taking menial jobs.  In the May 1886 at the Impressionist exhibition he showed several paintings, but most of them were old work, and he only made one sale.  Paul was assertive and opinionated, and art seemed to bring out his crankiness.  He made no friends publicly deploring the pointillist work of Georges Seurat that was now in fashion among the avant-garde.  And he quarreled with his friend Pissarro, making an enemy of his former friend, a man he had regularly painted with on Sunday afternoons.

In the summer of 1886 Gauguin stayed at the artist’s colony of Pont-Aven in Brittany.  This turned out to be a success: he finally found a place where he felt at home.  He gave full reign to his flamboyant and aggressive personality, dressing in an outlandish manner to attract attention.  Even if his artwork was not particularly admired, he thought a really neat guy: he made quite a hit there with the younger artists and students.  And his skill as a boxer and a fencer only enhanced his image.

Even as he continued to copy other artists, Gauguin developed his own style.  He would shun the objective representations of Impressionism and embraced a naive style inspired by the art of Asia and Africa — bold colors and lines, often featuring objects of flat color outlined in black.  He rejected the classical elements of painting, eg. correct perspective and proportion, formal composition, and shadings, highlights, and gradations of color.  Objecting to the superficiality of most contemporary art, he incorporated symbolic elements into his paintings.  It was his intent to paint not what the eye sees, but what the mind sees and thus capture the essence rather than merely the appearance of what he chose to paint.

In 1887, with one of his new young artist friends, Charles Laval, Gauguin travelled to Panama to find inspiration in the exotic.  They didn’t find there.  Broke and without jobs, they appealed to the French embassy to pay for their return trip to France.  On the way back, though, he and Laval stopped on the French West Indian island of Martinique and decided to stay.  Sick and living uncomfortably in a leaky hut, Gauguin nevertheless enjoyed himself and found inspiration, mingling with and painting the native inhabitants.  

Gauguin painted a dozen or more pictures during his 5-month stay and with them seemed to hit his stride as an artist.  These, landscapes with figures, scenes of rural life with simple people, informally painted and brightly colored,  epitomized what would be his style.  He exhibited them when he returned to France.  The work attracted the attention of an important Dutch art dealer, Theo van Gogh, who bought some of his work and showed it to his wealthy clients.  Paul become friends with van Gogh’s brother Vincent, who was a struggling artist.  Paul and Vincent corresponded and in his letters to him Gauguin formulated and expounded upon his philosophy of art.

At the suggestion of Theo, Vincent van Gogh asked Gauguin to live and paint with him at Arles in southern France, where van Gogh had gone for his health.  Vincent had rented rooms in a residence known from one of his paintings as the Yellow House.  (The house was damaged during WWII and demolished).  Paul accepted the invitation and arrived at Arles on October 23, 1888.   He soon learned he had made a mistake.  The two may have learned from each other, but there were inevitable conflicts.  Their painting styles and techniques were quite different, for instance, Gauguin did not share van Gogh’s enthusiasm for painting outdoors in all weathers and van Gogh could not adapt himself to Gauguin’s habit of painting from memory.  But van Gogh idolized Gauguin.  He hoped to be treated as his colleague, an equal, but Gauguin, dominating and lecturing, was not comfortable doing so.  Their intense personalities clashed and their relationship deteriorated.  The insecure and emotionally needy Van Gogh desperately hoped that Gauguin would not desert him.  Gauguin, who had chucked his marriage and respectable life to be an artist, chafed at attachments and obligations.  What’s more, Gauguin was naturally quarrelsome, while the sensitive van Gogh’s mental state was delicate at best.

In late December after being cooped up in the Yellow House for days because of rain, the two men quarreled violently.  When Gauguin took a walk, van Gogh chased after him and threatened him with a razor.  Afterwards Gauguin spent the night in a hotel.  Vincent, distraught and apparently having a psychotic episode in which he heard voices, cut off his left ear with the razor.  Although he later would not remember the episode, van Gogh bandaged his head and wrapped up the severed ear, which he delivered to a prostitute that worked in a brothel he and Paul frequented.  He later passed out and was taken by the police to a hospital.  As he recovered, Van Gogh repeatedly asked that Gauguin visit him, but Paul thought it best to leave Arles.  He returned to Paris and never saw van Gogh again, although they did continue to correspond.   (An alternative version of that night’s events has Gauguin being responsible for severing van Gogh’s ear during a physical altercation and Vincent agreeing not to say anything to implicate Paul).

Paul Gauguin hit upon the idea of going to the romantic South Seas, Tahiti, in particular, an overseas territory of France.   There he could leave behind the artificialities of civilization and be free of the demands of modern life.   A successful auction of his work in February 1991 provided the necessary funds for his trip.  After visiting his wife and children in Copenhagen for what turned out to be the last time, he departed for Tahiti on April 1, 1991. 

Gauguin spent his first three months in the capital of Tahiti, Papeete, but the city had already become so Europeanized it no longer had the primitive charm Gauguin was looking for.   Consequently, he moved to a village more than 30 miles from Papeete and lived there, native-style, in a bamboo hut.  This was a productive period with Gauguin executing his best and most representative work, portraits of native girls, scenes of native life, and illustrations of the lost culture and religion of Tahiti.  He also produced many woodcarvings.  Some of paintings were sent  back to France and Gauguin encouragingly heard word of sales.  During his stay in Tahiti, Gauguin contracted a marriage with a 13-year old native girl, whom he used as a model.  He also found time to write a travelogue entitled Noa Noa, which he would publish in 1901 —  however, the truthfulness of some of his accounts is suspect.

Gauguin was plagued by bad health, initially heart problems.  He was broke as well and so felt compelled to return to France, relying as he had before on government charity to pay for his passage. 

He returned to Paris in August 1893.  A show of his work in November 1893 was arranged by his long-time friend Edgar Degas.  Gauguin had bought Degas’ works when he was a collector in the ‘70s.  Now, Degas collected Gauguin’s works and lent him support and approval — even as other artists, Pissarro, Renoir, and Monet, scoffed at his works.

Continuing to produce “Tahitian” paintings, Paul set himself up in a studio in Montparnasse, an artist district in Paris.  He held a weekly salon where he would bedeck himself in Polynesian attire and show off his latest mistress, an exotic teenager from Java.  

A show in November 1994 resulted in sales, but subsequent exhibitions were financial failures.  Even though he had received an inheritance from an uncle, Gauguin was again short of funds.  He had become disillusioned with the European art world that had rejected him and embittered by the critical attacks directed against him and his work.   He yearned to go back to Tahiti.  And with help of friends he secured passage back to French Polynesia in June 1895.  He would never see Europe again.

In Tahiti he was able to support himself with sales of his artwork and enjoyed a comfortable life among the French colonists.  He was able to build a large house in an area outside Papeete where the rich people lived.  He became a journalist and took part in local politics.  He acquired another native wife, a 14-year old who bore him two children.  During his first year back in Tahiti he worked on nothing but woodcarvings.  When he returned to painting, he found himself catering to his fellow colonists rather than the avant garde of Paris.

In April 1897 he was in the process of building a new home, a lavish one, since the land on which his former home was situated had been sold.  Unfortunately, he was hard pressed financially and despaired of paying his debts.  His health was poor.  An injury to an ankle received during a drunken brawl back in France never healed and he had painful leg sores.  (These were long thought to be due to advanced syphilis, but recent examination of Gauguin’s teeth reveal no trace of mercury, which was commonly used to treat syphilis.  Therefore, it seems likely that he did not have the disease).  After finishing what he regarded as his masterpiece, the 14-foot wide tableau Where Do We Come From? What are We? Where Are We Going, he contemplated committing suicide.  But he did not go through with it.  His mood was soon buoyed and his fortunes were restored after several successful shows in Paris.  It seemed critics now liked his work.  And there was a new dealer who guaranteed him a regularly monthly advance.

Paul Gauguin could now fulfill his dream of settling in the more primitive Marquesas Islands, a French colony to the east of Tahiti.  He arrived there in September 1901 and built a fine two-story house in the center of the capital Atuona.  The Marquesas could not have been as he dreamed, though.  Its population had been decimated by European diseases so that only a few thousand inhabitants remained.  The Catholic Church indoctrinated the natives as the government oppressed them and traders exploited them.  Although it was not long before he antagonized the Catholic bishop, the iconoclastic  Gauguin befriended a Protestant pastor who had some medical training and was able to treat Gauguin’s legs.  Gauguin employed several servants and lived with another 14-year old girl who was probably as much nurse as wife.  They had a child together.  With no lack of models, Gauguin set out painting and sending his work back to France.  Back in Europe he had become a mysterious and legendary figure and his exotic art was at last appreciated.

By 1902 Gauguin’s health deteriorated, and he found it difficult to paint.  In addition to heart problems and the leg sores, he came to have vision loss.  He took morphine and  laudanum, but was careful to avoid becoming addicted.  Still full of spirit, though, Gauguin turned his attention to writing, recording reminiscences and penning complaints to the local government.  His criticisms of the constabulary led Gauguin to be charged with libeling a gendarme.  He received a prison sentence of three months.  Although in failing health, Gauguin endeavored to raise funds to go to Papeete to appeal his sentence.  He was very weak, in great pain, and suffering from fainting fits.  On the morning of May 8, 1903 he was found dead, either the victim of a heart attack or of an overdose of drugs he might have administered to ease his pain.

Gauguin’s effects were immediately auctioned off.  Some disappeared, but most of them eventually reached his wife Mete in Denmark.  His paintings increased in value and his reputation as an artist soared after his death.  Recently, one of his paintings was sold for 210 million dollars!  His primitive style has exerted considerable influence upon many early 20th Century artists, Pablo Picasso being the most notable.  He is still remembered in French Polynesia.  There is a Paul Gauguin Cultural Center in Atuona and a Paul Gauguin Museum in Tahiti.  He left descendants in Europe, Tahiti, and the Marquesas, some of whom became artists.

Gauguin and his colorful life inspired many literary works, among them Somerset Maugham's novel, The Moon and Six Pence.  Gauguin was memorably portrayed in the 1956 van Gogh film biography Lust for Life, with Anthony Quinn, himself an outstanding primitive artist and collector, winning an Academy Award for his performance.

Portrait of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare  20 x 16 inches, Acrylic, 2019

 William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)  is considered the greatest dramatist in the English language.  He was born in Stratford-on-Avon, in Warwickshire, central England, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth.  His father, John Shakespeare, was a glove maker and alderman, his mother, Mary Arden, was the daughter of a well-to-do farmer.  He was educated in a local school, where he would have at least learned Latin.  In 1583 when he was 18, William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, who was 26 at the time.  The wedding was a rushed affair: Anne was already pregnant, for she gave birth to their first child, Susana, 6 months later.  In 1585, twins, Hamnet and Judith were born.  (Hamnet would die at the age of 11).  The skimpy public record divulges all that is known of the early life of the Bard of Avon.  Little else is known of Shakespeare until, in 1592, when he became part of the theater scene in London.

When Shakespeare began writing plays is uncertain, probably in the early 1590s or before, but his early work did achieve considerable recognition.  He was considered something of an upstart, though, for he was an outsider and a marginally educated man, unlike, for instance, his contemporary and rival Christopher Marlowe who graduated from Cambridge University.  It is not known what acting company first performed Shakespeare’s plays, perhaps several did.  But after 1594 the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the leading company in London, were the exclusive producers of his plays.  Will Shakespeare was part owner of the company and although its leading player was Richard Burbage, Shakespeare was also one of its actors.  (What roles in his own plays Shakespeare might have assumed is a matter of conjecture).  After the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the company, now under the patronage of King James I, was renamed The King’s Men.  Its most famous acting venue was The Globe Theatre, built on the south bank of the Thames in 1599.  (The Globe burned down in 1613, was rebuilt, but closed in 1642 by Puritans who regarded the stage as sinful.  In 1997 a replica of the theater, constructed near the original location, opened.  The campaign to achieve this restoration had been spearheaded not by the English acting establishment, but, curiously, by Chicago-born actor Sam Wanamaker, who, unfortunately, died before his dream came to full fruition.)

At the beginning of his career Will Shakespeare probably collaborated with other playwrights; his plays were no doubt revised by other hands.  Titus Andronicus, a tragedy set in ancient Rome, one of his earliest plays, was likely a result of such collaboration.  Conforming with the prevailing fashion on the stage, Shakespeare wrote a series of histories chronicling the reigns of past English kings, such as  Richard III,  Henry VI, Richard II,  Henry V and others.  He seemed to have cribbed most of his historical information from a single volume of history.  (We know this because he replicated the mistakes found there).  Early works also included comedies, a genre he would develop throughout the decade of the ‘90s.  There was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with a cast of bucolic fairies, including the mischievous sprite Puck, The Merchant of Venice with woman-lawyer Portia and Jewish moneylender Shylock,  As You Like It and Twelfth Night, which both involved women impersonating men.  (It might be noted that women did not appear as performers on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage.  Female parts were always assumed by men or boys).

By the end of the 16th Century Shakespeare was composing his greatest masterpieces.  There was Julius Caesar, a study of character and society, much more than a dry retelling of history, and Romeo and Juliet, a tragic tale of adolescent romance in medieval Italy.  But Shakespeare is hailed most for the four tragedies written in the first decade of the 17th Century, Hamlet, a prince of Denmark who is torn by indecision whether or not he should avenge the murder of his father,  Othello, a Moor (Black) driven to become jealous of his faithful wife Desdemona, King Lear, about an aged king who disastrously tries to apportion his kingdom among his daughters, and MacBeth, a medieval noble egged on by his wife to seize the Scottish throne by murdering the king.  Also in his late period Shakespeare returned to ancient Roman history with Antony and  Cleopatra and Coriolanus, and penned the tragi-comedies Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest, as well as working on a few lesser known plays, probably in collaboration with John Fletcher, who would take his place as the company’s chief playwright.

In all, William Shakespeare, over a period of about 25 years, wrote 38 plays, most of them still well-known to the modern public, and many considered classics, if not possessing greatness.  The order in which they are written cannot be definitely determined.  Many of the plays were printed in his lifetime, some of them with dialogue garbled, revised, even reconstructed from memory, surely none authorized by the playwright.  Shakespeare could not have expected that his plays would be preserved for posterity.  But in 1623, years after Shakespeare’s death, two members of  The King’s Men paid great tribute to their friend and playwright, and took it upon themselves to publish a definitive edition of 36 of his plays, in what is known as the First Folio.  A folio book is made from a large sheet of paper folded once, a format used for books of importance.  Earlier additions of Shakespeare’s plays were in the cheaper quarto form, made with paper that is folded twice.  The First Folio was 12 1/2 inches high.  No more than 750 out of an original 1000 printed are existent today.  Later, other folio additions appeared.

William Shakespeare is renown as well for his poetical works,  When the theaters in London were closed down owing to the plague in 1593 and 1594, Shakespeare wrote and published Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.  These were modeled on the poem Metamorphoses written by the Roman poet Ovid, first published in 8 AD.  These poems, as well as Shakespeare’s plays, reveal how strongly he and other authors of his time were inspired and influenced by the literature of ancient Greece and Rome.  During his life Shakespeare composed a large number of sonnets.  (The sonnet is a poetical form that originated in Italy during the Renaissance.  The English sonnet consists of 14 lines, usually with 10 syllables per line).  Shakespeare shared his poetry only among his friends, but late in life, in 1609, he published a collection of 154 sonnets.  They, like his other poems, were well received by the public and several of his sonnets are remembered today; for example Sonnet 18 “Shall I compare thee to a summer day?”
  
It is assumed that during his career as a playwright Shakespeare took breaks from his sojourn in London to return to Stratford to spend time with his family.  A relatively wealthy man, he lived there in the town’s second largest house.  He wrote his last important plays in 1612 or so, and it is thought that after that he went into a kind of semi-retirement.  He died at the age of 56 on April 23, 1616.  The circumstances of his death are not known, but it is reported that he was in good health up until the end.  He was buried in the Holy Trinity Church on Stratford.  A memorial for him was later established in the Poets Corner in Westminster Abbey in London.

As is not uncommon with great men, William Shakespeare has no living descendants.  His daughter Susanna married a physician named John Hall and his other daughter Judith wed a vintner named Thomas Quiney.  Susanna Hall had a daughter who married twice, but had no children.  Judith Quiney had three children, but none of them married.

That Shakespeare had a profound effect upon dramaturgy would be a gross understatement.  His plays have had an impact not only upon the English stage and upon English literature, but upon the theater in practically every country.  So many lines from his plays, so many expressions that he employed have found their way into the English lexicon.  Many speeches from his plays are in the public memory — Hamlet’s soliloquy, Marc Antony’s funeral oration, Portia’s “The quality of mercy is not strained, “All the world’s a stage,” “This England,” and so forth.  Although the language of his plays is for the most part quite formal, as well as poetic, Shakespeare exerted significant influence upon the development of modern English. 

Thought well of in his lifetime, Shakespeare fell into some disfavor during the late 17th and 18th Centuries.  However, he had his notable champions: John Dryden, who was made English poet laureate in 1688, Dr. Samuel Johnson, whose 1755 dictionary quoted him more than any other author,  the French philosopher Voltaire, and the great German writer  Johanne von Goethe.  In the 19th Century Shakespeares’ stock rose.  Major literary figures such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Carlyle, the Romantic poets, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, and many others were inspired by him.  The public embraced him even as new playwrights such as Ibsen, Shaw, and others redefined the theater.  Into the 21st Century, William Shakespeare retains a god-like stature and, more than that, his plays continue to be performed (and quoted), as well as made into popular movies.

No portrait or drawing of Shakespeare was made during his lifetime and, therefore, what he actually looked like is a moot question.  There is not even a written description of his appearance.  A rather stilted and stylized engraving of Shakespeare appears in the First Folio, published after his death.  It was claimed to be a fair likeness by those who knew the man.  A painted carving of Shakespeare made years after his death adorns the monument for him in Stratford.  It depicts an older man, balding and bearded.  It can probably be taken as a reasonable representation.  Over the centuries many portraits have surfaced claiming to be of Shakespeare and painted from life.  A few might be, but this is wishful thinking and, alas, they are more likely to be portraits of other subjects.

Owing to the paucity of real knowledge about his private life, there have been persistent suspicions that William Shakespeare did not exist as we know him and that he was not the author of his plays.  Several theories have been offered, that Shakespeare wrote in collaboration, that his name was merely a nom de plume for someone else or some group of authors, or that he was conduit for plays written by someone else.  Francis Bacon and Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford have been the two most commonly cited as possible authors of Shakespeare’s plays.  There is intriguing evidence to fuel all these theories, and Shakespeare critics have included many prominent actors and great and thoughtful men.  Nevertheless, the preponderance of evidence suggests that the man from Stratford-on-Avon was the sole author of the Shakespeare canon.  Existent writings of Bacon and de Vere do not resemble Shakespeare’s writing at all.  De Vere was dead while Shakespeare was still turning out plays.  Even if there is sparse evidence of his existence, contemporary figures, such as playwright Ben Jonson knew and spoke of the playwright Shakespeare. And recent computer analysis of the plays concludes that they were the product of a single author and not the result of a group project.  The explanation for Shakespeare’s prolific output, his facility with language, his knowledge of history and mythology, his scholarship unhindered by a lack of formal education, his wisdom and humanity, and his profound understanding of human character can partly be explained by an obvious fact — the man was a genius.

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.