The Miniature Painter Revealed (Amalia Kussner's Gilded Age Pursuit of Fame and Fortune)

The riveting story of how one woman rose from simple beginnings to become one of the most sought-after miniaturists of the Gilded Age. Richly illustrated with over 70 photos, including color images of her rare surviving works.

No other female portrait artist had the notoriety or esteemed clientele that Amalia Kussner did. Although photography was on the rise during the late 1800s, miniatures had a feeling and soul to them that photos could not capture. Amalia’s portraits provided a grandeur that presented Gilded Age elites as American royalty. Her subjects included reigning social queen Mrs. Caroline Astor, Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Consuelo Vanderbilt, Mamie Fish, “dollar heiress” Minnie Paget, Edward VII of England, Czar Nicholas II and Alexandra of Russia, and diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes.

From the mid-1890s to 1910, having a Kussner miniature was just as important as owning fine jewelry or a mansion in Newport. Amalia’s style was also provocative for the late Victorian period. Her subjects were draped in off-the-shoulder satin or tulle, with their hair loosely pinned around their heads and tendrils framing their faces. She kept the women’s best features but gave them an almost mythical appearance, akin to the fairy queen Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Amalia Kussner has been included, along with other nineteenth-century women artists, in the “first wave of feminism” in large part because she commanded very high commissions, comparable to male artists of the time. She was fascinating and sometimes mysterious—particularly regarding her sudden marriage to lawyer Charles du Pont Coudert. She achieved fame and fortune, but her story also revealed a few lawsuits, scandals, and lies.