I’m welcoming a guest podcaster to the show today. Kathleen Langone runs the People Hidden in History podcast, which she began by researching her own family history but has since expanded. History podcasts have a way of doing that. I have personally appeared on her show twice, once to talk about Elizabeth Freeman, the 18^th century slave who sued for her freedom and won. And more recently to talk about the general experience of history podcasting by women. But my personal favorite of her episodes is actually on Lew Wallace, governor of my beloved home state New Mexico, but also the author of Ben Hur, among other things, but you can stay here for her words on Amalia Küssner, a Miniature Portrait Painter.

During the height of the Gilded Age and into the early 20th century was an amazing artist. Amalia Küssner. Her art style was that of miniature portraits, and she painted the most wealthy and famous of those that lived at this time. She was not only a talented artist but adept at promoting herself and garnering commissions equal to other men artists at the time. You are going to learn about the amazing trajectory of her life and also clear up some misconceptions about her.

Her life started very simply, being born during the Civil War in Greencastle, Indiana, and she was the youngest of three children with her parents being Lorenz Küssner and Emily Weinhardt Küssner. It is through her mother’s Weinhardt family that I am distantly related.

Just as the war was ending, her family moved to Terre Haute, Indiana, where his wife’s family helped him obtain a building where his music instrument repair business was established on the first floor, and the family could live on the second.

Amalia did indeed grow up in a family who loved the arts, including music. It’s been documented that Amalia and her siblings created and performed their own plays using a mock stage setup in their living room. But Amalia did show early drawing talents, and there are a couple of origin stories on the discovery of her abilities. One was that her brother gave her discarded ivory piano keys from her father’s repair business that she painted on. Also, I have read that she started sketching scenes of the scenery around her home from their second-floor window.

Her family recognized these talents, and she attended and took art lessons at the St. Mary of the Woods Academy, very close to Terre Haute, and her primary teacher was a Sister Schnell, who was also an accomplished artist. After graduating from high school around 1881, Amalia was sent essentially to a finishing school in New York City, where she received further art lessons and also learned multiple languages, which later helped her in Europe with her travels.

Back home at Terre Haute, she started both miniature paintings and also painting on Minton tiles from Britain that graced the homes of at least one relative as decorative fireplace tiles. Her style and quality of portraits became broadly known, and she set up a business from her hometown.

While her artistic career was blossoming, I must mention her brother, Albert Küssner. He became an accomplished composer and moved to Chicago where he was also involved in the publishing of his compositions. Amalia made frequent trips to Chicago and received further notoriety and business through her brother’s connections.

Her commissions continued to increase, but she instinctively knew that she could only go so far in the heartland of America, and through an invitation from a friend, Alice Fischer, who was then a Broadway actress, she travels to New York City in 1892. This was a key turning point in her life, and she essentially left her Indiana life behind, though she did stay in close contact with her family the rest of her life.

Upon arriving in New York City at a time when the Gilded Age was still at its height with the ruling families of the Astors and the Vanderbilts, Amalia could not have arrived at a better time to be a miniature portrait artist, since this style was having a robust revival.

She even had a brief time of employment at Tiffany Glass, but evidently stayed there less than a year and shortly after, through her Broadway friend, she connects with Mrs. Louisine Havemeyer, already an established art collector and patron of the arts, including the well-known Mary Cassatt. Note that Amalia went to Mrs. Havemeyer’s home without an invitation and essentially stayed downstairs while Mrs. Havemeyer looked at her samples. Well, her persistence pays off, and Mrs. Havemeyer helps promote Amalia to the elite of New York City.

Let’s talk briefly about her style and how she posed her clients, who were mostly female. Her ability to paint miniatures was amazing, but was it the best of her peers? Possibly not.

But what set her apart was how she posed her women. She became known for her wrap style, where many of these ladies were swaths of fabric like tulle, velvet, or satin, and often layered on top with lace or silk flowers. These wraps revealed much of the neck and decolletage, often showing their shoulders and maybe a bit of cleavage. This was somewhat shocking for this day and age, and she made these women look quite regal, almost always displaying their fine jewelry, such as earrings and necklaces with stunning gemstones such as rubies and sapphires, and sometimes strings of pearl entwined in their hair. And you must realize these elite Gilded Age families wanted to be considered the royalty of America, and her artistic depictions certainly reflected this. Also, to paint the fine details needed, her brushes sometimes only had three to four bristles, and she also had her subjects in semi-darkness to accent their facial features, while she would sit by a window with natural light.

Amalia’s career would take another key turn. When she connected with Minnie Paget who married into British royalty as a dollar heiress, with her husband financially benefiting from the American money he received. Lady Paget brought Amalia into British royal circles, and she painted Prince Edward VII and even a mistress or two of his. Again, she painted these women in typically elegant and frankly sensuous poses.

We now come to 1899, another incredible turning point in her life. Her fame reached the Romanoff family in Russia and Tsar Nicholas and his wife Alexandra. She eventually ends up at the Winter Palace in March of that year and spends an incredible two weeks, painting both of them. She is quite welcomed by the family, which amazingly, all spoke English. It’s clear she actually becomes friends with Tsarina Alexandra, who was more known for being shy and staying away from public life. Amalia would later go on to write a detailed article about the visit in a 1906 issue of Century Magazine.

But that year, her adventures weren’t over yet. In October, she traveled to South Africa to paint Cecil Rhodes. There are two amazing facts for this visit. First, she was not invited to his compound in Kimberly, South Africa. And she travels from Cape Town to Kimberly at the start of the Boer War, where even her train was boarded by the Boers, but seen as a non-combatant, she was left alone. She actually traveled with her friend, Nancy Houston Banks, a journalist who did have an invitation to Rhodes’ compound with great reluctance. Rhodes admits her to his Kimberly compound, and shortly after, the Boers start shelling the compound. Rhodes, his staff and family, plus Amalia, are stuck there, some accounts say for a few months, but she continues to paint Rhodes in an underground setup. She eventually finishes his portrait from memory, upon returning to Europe.

And now some about her personal life. We will take that front and center. A few years earlier, she had met Charles duPont Coudert, most likely in Paris, France. They seem to have started a relationship, but he then entered into the Spanish American War.

As is often the case with men of wealthy families who serve in wars, they are usually in safer positions and not sent into the heat of battle. This was the case for Coudert. He initially served in Washington DC, but later did end up in the Philippines in 1899 and managed a commissary, implying managing food supplies or a military cafeteria.

From what I could find, he was involved for close to two years and did get the rank of captain. But Coudert and Amalia are reunited when she returns from her South Africa trip to New York City. Note that Coudert was from a prestigious family of lawyers, and he himself was a lawyer.

They marry six months later in July of 1900. This was not a marriage accepted by Coudert’s family, and in an age of lavish soirees and being in the public eye, their marriage was announced after the fact, with only Amalia’s and her husband’s mothers in attendance at the service. After years of research, I have never seen any photos of their wedding day.

Amalia’s background did not have the hallmarks of those accepted by society. And furthermore, she was not Catholic, as was the Coudert family. And they had to get a dispensation to marry. The couple never had children, and this may have been a marriage of convenience.

Another fascinating fact about her life is that an 1895 magazine article stated that she was only 22 at the time, making her 10 years younger. Amalia capitalized on this mistake and lied about her age, even on her passports. She knew that a young woman in her twenties was far more intriguing than a woman in her thirties. And I have seen her passport application in Ancestry.com, which states a birth year of 1873.

Many historical writings of Amalia claim her career slowed down at this time, with very little work after this marriage. This is definitely a misconception. It’s just that her life with Charles Coudert was increasingly in Europe, with buying an estate in England around 1914.

She also painted the Duchess of Marlborough, actually four times. And this duchess started life as Consuelo Vanderbilt, with the domineering mother Alva Vanderbilt, and was basically forced to marry British royalty. Amalia’s portrait beautifully captures her likeness with her delicate features and long neck.

It is documented that around 1912, she does stop painting her miniatures and she and her husband spend the next twenty years traveling all the parts of Europe that the rich gravitated towards.

I have very little information on her life during World War I, but there is evidence that she removed diamonds from one of her necklaces and donated those to raise money for the war effort.

Their lives seemed to go into obscurity until the time of her death from a lung ailment in Switzerland in 1932.

In reflecting back on her career, she was internationally acclaimed, and to date I have found no fewer than 100 newspaper and magazine articles on her. She was a woman ahead of her time, aggressively promoting herself and getting handsome commissions. In fact, I just found a letter from an online site from her to Century Magazine, where she is clearly pushing for a higher payment on the article she goes on to write about the Tsar and Tsarina. This was certainly unusual behavior for women at that time.  

Though she was never documented as marching in the suffragette parades in the early 1900s, she practiced their spirit and led her life boldly, granting herself the rights that so many women fought for.

There are very few museums that have her works now, but the best collection is at the Swope Art Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana, where they have three exquisite miniatures. As to why she isn’t better known at this time? My thoughts are that her miniatures were not deemed as fine art, and therefore she fell into obscurity.

But I am delighted to have had this opportunity to share her incredible life through the Her Half of History podcast series.

Please check out Kathleen’s site People Hidden in History for more information on Amalia, not to mention all her other episodes. Her social media links are also in the show notes. I very much hope that this is only the first of many guest podcasts on the show, so if you are a podcaster or if you wish you were a podcaster, get in touch with me at herhalfofhistory@gmail.com and pitch me a topic. Or on Twitter at @her_half or on Facebook or Instagram as Her Half of History. Your topic doesn’t necessarily have to fit into the series topic because there’s all that white space and dead air in between my series. You could be the one to fill it.

The title image is a drawing of Amalia by Violet Granby, published in The Critic, volume 39, in 1901.