Arts and Tarts

As part of our Pearls week we shall be looking at ‘Sinful pleasures,’ where pearls are used as a metaphor for sheer wickedness. And we will begin with:

Seductresses and Courtesans.

Four thousand years ago pearls were worn first and foremost by male rulers to display their wealth and the power vested in them by the deity. It was only later that pearls came to be seen as feminine adornments, and in the arts from the Renaissance to the present day they have been used to symbolise the sins and weaknesses traditionally ascribed to women: vanity, greed and extravagance. For painters the main attraction was the opportunity to depict fascinating female characters – the penitent sinner Mary Magdalene, the malicious Salome, or the famous courtesans (tarts) of the day – in all their seductive glory, in settings to delight the voyeuristic instincts of contemporary viewers.


Such an artist was Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1759 when he painted the high-class courtesan Kitty Fisher who at the time was ‘supported’ by a vast number of gentleman clients (and shock horror some ladies too). So famous was she that she unleashed a wave of ‘Fishermania’ in London with young women imitating her style of dress, while journalists wrote obscene verses in her praise.

Kitty was the most notorious English courtesan of the 18th century. Her early life remains a mystery; and like any classy lady, so does her year of birth. She did get her start as a milliner but the life of classy prostitute was just too tempting. She took a pride in her work and she did it well. When the famous lover Giacomo Casanova came to England he was "fortunate" enough to meet Kitty,

In this painting she is seen depicted as Cleopatra dissolving a pearl in vinegar in order to seduce Mark Antony.( so as you can see pearls have a variety of uses.)

It is said that Sir Joshua Reynolds too fell for Kitty’s charms.

Today Kitty Fisher’s name lives on in the children’s nursery rhyme. "Lucy Locket Lost Her Pocket" which is sung to the tune of "Yankee Doodle Went to Town"...

The origins of the rhyme are not as innocent as they may seem. Two of the courtesans of Charles II's time were Lucy Locket and Kitty Fisher. The rhyme suggests that Kitty Fisher supplanted Lucy Locket in Charles' fickle esteem".


Lucy Locket lost her pocket,
Kitty Fisher found it;
Not a penny was there in it,
Only ribbon round it.