Kathleen Langone

Amalia was advised that one of the attendees was the noted art connoisseur who had earlier dismissed her work. This was certainly a triumph for Amalia, as she was known to keep track of those who may have slighted her in the past.
This inaugural exhibit was followed two years later by a show in Cincinnati, Ohio, to benefit the Laura Memorial College and Hospital. Though there was only one of Amalia’s miniatures on display, this exhibit had an even more impressive list of artists and subjects from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, some of which included Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir Thomas Gainsborough, and Gilbert Stuart with one of his iconic paintings of George Washington. Amalia’s miniature was that of Mrs. Cyrus Hall McCormick, wife of the inventor who founded the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, later to become International Harvester Company after his passing.
In the mid-1890s, word of Amalia’s popularity reached even the highest of the Gilded Age women: Mrs. Caroline Astor. Mrs. Astor was in her mid-sixties at this time and wanted her portrait to be as “kind” as possible. She was quite vain and didn’t like being photographed.32 The likeness presented by Amalia in the finished miniature is a softened image of the woman, and it does indeed portray a more lovely Mrs. Astor. Her face is clearly thinner, and her usually small eyes are made larger and more delicate. Known for her many fine pieces of jewelry, Mrs. Astor is painted wearing a collar-like necklace of large oval gems surrounded by diamonds. Amalia also painted her youngest daughter, Carrie, who became Mrs. Orme Wilson, and her daughter-in-law, Mrs. John Jacob Astor.