Kitty Fisher

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Catherine Maria ('Kitty') Fisher (died 1767) was one of the most famous English courtesans of her day.

[edit] Life as a courtesan

Known for her beauty, wit and horse-riding skills, she was both a favourite model of Sir Joshua Reynolds and an aspiring actress, but would become best known for her high profile affairs with men of wealth.

When he visited London in the 1760s, Giacomo Casanova met Fisher and wrote:

"... the illustrious Kitty Fisher, who was just beginning to be fashionable. She was magnificently dressed, and it is no exaggeration to say that she had on diamonds worth five hundred thousand francs. Goudar told me that if I liked I might have her then and there for ten guineas. I did not care to do so, however, for, though charming, she could only speak English, and I liked to have all my senses, including that of hearing, gratified. When she had gone, Mrs. Wells told us that Kitty had eaten a bank-note for a thousand guineas, on a slice of bread and butter, that very day. The note was a present from Sir Akins, brother of the fair Mrs. Pitt. I do not know whether the bank thanked Kitty for the present she had made it." (In London And Moscow: The English by Jacques Casanova de Seingalt).

Kitty maintained a famous rivalry with Maria Gunning, who became Lady Coventry, due to Kitty's affair with Gunning's husband, George William Coventry, 3th Earl of Coventry. Giustiniana Wynne, visiting London at the time, wrote:

"The other day they ran into each other in the park and Lady Coventry asked Kitty the name of the dressmaker who had made her dress. Kitty Fisher answered she had better ask Lord Coventry as he had given her the dress as a gift." The altercation continued with Lady Coventry calling her an impertinent woman, and Kitty replying that she would have to accept this insult because Maria became her 'social superior' on marrying Lord Coventry, but she was going to marry a Lord herself just to be able to answer back.^[1]

Giustiniana also wrote that "She lives in the greatest possible splendor, spends twelve thousand pounds a year, and she is the first of her social class to employ liveried servants - she even has liveried chaise porters." (Quoted in A Venetian Affair by Andrea di Robilant)

[edit] Immortalized in art, diaries and letters

Nathaniel Hone painted her in 1765, at the height of her popularity. [1] His famous painting, now in the National Portrait Gallery, London, shows her with a kitten ('kitty'), which is trying to get at a goldfish in a bowl ('fisher'). Reflected in the bowl are the faces of a crowd of people, looking through a window.

Besides sitting for Sir Joshua Reynolds (multiple times) [2] [3] and Nathaniel Hone, she was painted by Philip Mercier, James Northcote, and Richard Purcell, among others. [4] [5] [6]

Apart from the letters of Giustiniana Wynne, she is mentioned in the diaries and letters of people as varied as Madame D'Arblay and Horace Walpole.

In 1766, she married Mr. Norris, son of the M.P. for Rye. However she died shortly thereafter from the effects of lead-based cosmetics in 1767.

She is immortalised in the nursery rhyme, Lucy Locket.