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Marvelous vintage matte-finish 8 x 10 portrait photo of Albert Einstein by Trude Fleischmann, picturing Einstein in profile holding a pipe to his mouth, neatly signed and inscribed in the lower border in black ink, “To Mrs Lenore Marshall, A. Einstein 54.” In fine condition, with a tiny tack hole to the top border, and light silvering to the darker areas of the image.
The photographer, Trude Fleischmann, had a studio in Vienna before moving to the United States—also under pressure from world affairs—to open a studio in New York City. Her work spanned celebrity portraits and fashion photography (most notably for Vogue), with some of her famous subjects including Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Oskar Kokoschka, and Arturo Toscanini.
Einstein was well-known for his pipe smoking—other than his messy hair, there may be no more characteristic element of his image than his pipe. Even in later years when he curbed his tobacco use on doctor's orders, he could not bear to give up the tactile experience—he would smokelessly cradle the bowl in hand or clench the stem between his teeth while he did his deepest thinking. Upon joining the Montreal Pipe Smokers Club in 1950, he reportedly said: 'I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.'
Lenore Guinzberg Marshall was an American author and anti-nuclear activist (1899-1971) who was a member and director of PEN, the Poetry Society of America, Pen and Brush, the Authors’ League, and the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Marshall’s political activism was as important to her career as her literary accomplishments. A member of the Post-War World Council from 1940 to 1962, Marshall expressed profound concerns for the fate of humanity in the wake of world war. Marshall co-founded the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy in 1956 and was the founding co-director of the Committee for Nuclear Responsibility in 1971. Her papers are housed at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University.
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