The Kitty Fisher Bonnet

By the autumn of 1759, Kitty Fisher was recognized as the newest style icon. Even the simplest of her gowns were set off with costly jewellery. Lady Caroline Fox wrote to her sister, the Countess of Kildare, to say that:

I saw a young woman t’other day at Court that pleases me more than any I have seen for years except my own sisters. ’Tis Lady Northampton. She is not a beauty, but so much sense, modesty and air of a woman of fashion both in manner and person make her vastly pleasing. None of the Kitty Fisher style either in dress or manner, which all the young women affect now.

Kitty also set trends in headgear. As a former milliner, she knew how to create a show-stopping hat. Strange as it may seem, the best idea we can get of Kitty’s famous bonnet is from a painting of two girls dressing a kitten by candlelight. The artist was Joseph Wright of Derby, and the picture postdates Kitty’s life by a year or two but contains a series of ‘in-jokes’ relating to Kitty. At first glance, it depicts an innocent scene in which two young girls have put down their doll and begun, as a game, to dress up their pet kitten. However, it has darker undertones.

Two Girls Dressing a Kitten by Candlelight by Joseph Wright of Derby. English Heritage, Kenwood via Art UK.

In art, a cat ‘could symbolise danger, luxury, sensuality and lust; when shown with children at play, they engaged themes of discipline and education, seduction and the pains of love.’ The kitten, which is a tomcat, has at some point had his genitalia overpainted during the last 250 years but his tail, protruding between the hind legs, is suggestive of masculine arousal. It has been suggested that both the doll and the kitten (the kitty-cat) refer to Kitty Fisher. An eighteenth-century viewer would have got the joke, made in a ‘nudge-nudge (wink-wink)’ style. Several clues support this theory. The girls’ doll, discarded with its skirt and petticoat awry, is reminiscent of Kitty’s fall from her horse, the episode which catapulted her into public notoriety. Despite the kitten being a tomcat, a 1781 engraving of the painting bore the title ‘Miss Kitty Dressing’. Did the bonnet or cap with which the kitten has been dressed give a further clue to the contemporary viewer? Does he wear a Kitty Fisher Bonnet? If so, then the hat appears to have a small lace-edged brim that is curved back on either side, making the front a sweetheart peak.[i]

Above this peak are some pink flowers and what may be ribbons. Although it is difficult to see, the brim at the back also appears to curve up, similar to a male tricorn. There are more additions to be found in the engraving of the portrait. Along with the ribbons and a sprig of flowers, the bonnet is decorated with two feathers, standing upright. This gives it height, a fact that the petite Kitty would have appreciated.

Miss Kitty Dressing, mezzotint by Thomas Watson, 1781, after Joseph Wright of Derby. National Gallery of Art.

As further proof that this is indeed the famed Kitty Fisher Bonnet, in one of Joseph Reynolds’s portraits Kitty wears a dainty cap that looks very similar to the one worn by the kitten. Reynolds’s portrait of Kitty wearing what may be her trademark bonnet was never finished. Had it been then it would, perhaps, have been the most impressive of Reynolds’s portraits of Kitty. It is said that this was the painting on Reynolds’s easel when he died.

Formal, but still maintaining a sensual quality, Kitty sits at a table, her arms folded in front of her, returning the gaze of the viewer. She appears to be lost in thought and the portrait as a whole has a dreamlike quality to it. She is every inch the archetypal society lady, apart from that knowing gaze with which she stares out from the canvas.

Kitty’s hair is powdered and fastened tightly back. On top of her head is a neat cap or bonnet. Although the ‘sweetheart’ line at the front is not pronounced, the headgear worn by Kitty in this portrait does lift at the front on either side. The sprig of flowers and upright feathers of the engraving are missing but there are blue ribbons and flowers placed exactly where the pink ones were on the bonnet worn by Joseph Wright of Derby’s little tomcat. There is a suggestion in the painting that the back of the hat is also curved upwards. This, then, would seem to be the bonnet that Kitty wore to such acclaim that women across the world clamoured to own a similar one. Kitty’s fame was such that, by 1760, the Kitty Fisher Bonnet was being advertised as far away as Boston in America.

Kitty Fisher by Joshua Reynolds, via Elton Hall's website

Kitty's bonnet was still remembered twenty years later. At the famous Don Saltero’s Coffee House in Chelsea were multiple glass cabinets containing ‘curiosities’. On a shelf in one of these, alongside such exotic, diverse, and wonderful exhibits as the tusk of an otter, Oliver Cromwell’s seal, a couple of locusts, and a Chinese ladies’ back scratcher was ‘Miss Kitty Fisher’s favourite cap of flowers, made of shells.’

_________________________________

This is a partial excerpt from my book, Kitty Fisher: The First Female Celebrity (Pen & Sword, 2022). The Reynolds portrait of Kitty wearing her 'Kitty Fisher Bonnet' can be viewed at Elton Hall, Peterborough.

[i] I am indebted to the research of Stephen Leach (Keele University) on the portrait, ‘Two Girls Dressing a Kitten by Candlelight’ by Joseph Wright of Derby. Quote on the use of cats in Dutch art from Joseph Wright in Liverpool by Elizabeth E. Barker (Yale University Press, 2007). Joseph Wright’s painting is now located at Kenwood, along with the Cleopatra portrait of Kitty by Reynolds.