Blog

08 Aug Comic Actress Elizabeth Farren

Posted at 10:50h in courtesans, Metropolitan Museum, Women's History by Professor Andrew Lear

Elizabeth Farren was the great comic actress of 18th century London. She was the mistress of the Earl of Derby and when his wife died, he married her, so she became the Countess of Derby. Don't imagine that this put their relationship beyond the aim...

08 Aug Shady Ladies Tours presents: Kitty Fisher

Posted at 10:37h in Metropolitan Museum, Women's History by jenni

Kitty Fisher was one of the most famous Shady Ladies of early 18th century London—so famous that she still survives in the child's rhyme "Lucy Locket lost her pocket/Kitty Fisher found it" and so on. Fisher was an early example of a celeb, and she used portraits to get publicity, including this one, which shows her holding an elegant cloth up to block the public's view of her bosom. The painting contains a joke about her name in the form of a kitty fishing in a goldfish bowl—in the side of which you can see reflected the curious public at the window. Curious about the scandalous ladies of the past? Come on the Shady Ladies tour!

14 Dec Fashion History in Art

Posted at 22:42h in art history, beauty standards, courtesans, fashion, fashion history, Metropolitan Museum, Shady Ladies, Women's History by Professor Andrew Lear

We have been giving fashion history tours at the Metropolitan Museum for several months now, and the more we work on them, the more we see that fashion history is probably the biggest theme in the entire museum. If you think about it, you might think thathttps://shadyladiestours.com/fashion-and-beauty-tour/beauty—human beauty—is the biggest theme in the art history. But if you look carefully at the beautiful people in the museum, you will see that (aside perhaps from the Greek male nudes), the person's features are only a secondary aspect of the images. It isn't their natural beauty that makes people beautiful in art. Instead, the artworks focus on many other aspects of the beautiful person: on hairdos and make-up and jewelry and clothing and accessories and shoes. In short, human beauty in art consists not of beautiful features, but of costume or fashion.

07 Dec Who was the greatest Shady Lady?

Posted at 23:26h in art history, courtesans, Metropolitan Museum by jenni

People often ask us who the greatest Shady Lady was. And it's a hard question, because there are lots of possibilities: famous royal mistresses like Diane de Poitiers or Madame de Pompadour, famous courtesans like Marie Duplessis (the original of the Lady of the Camellias...

12 Sep Why were high foreheads once considered a sign of beauty?

Posted at 19:14h in art history, Metropolitan Museum, Shady Ladies, Women's History by Professor Andrew Lear

This painting portrays Saint Justina of Padua as a Renaissance fashion plate. The pearls, rubies, and emeralds sewn onto her clothing, cap, and hair tie were the mark of an aristocratic lady; her embroidered stomacher (the triangular piece covering chest and stomach) was the height of fashion, as were her elegant green sleeves (as in the song!), separate from her bodice, with the blouse pulled through the gaps in a style called 'slashing'. Most noticeable to a modern eye is her amazingly high forehead.

01 Sep Courtesans and mistresses in art

Posted at 01:12h in art history, courtesans, Metropolitan Museum, Paris tour, Shady Ladies, Women's History by Professor Andrew Lear

Elegant women are a huge theme in art history, and people mostly assume, as they stroll through art museums, that they are looking at queens, duchesses, and the wives of the wealthy. But often enough, they aren't. They are looking at royal "favorites," mistresses, and courtesans. Courtesans are in fact a particularly large theme in art, probably bigger than queens and duchesses. But people today pass by them without realizing who or what they were, because courtesans, if they exist today, are not important in our culture, so we're unaware of them.

31 Aug The feminist concept of the “male gaze”

Posted at 17:27h in art history, courtesans, Metropolitan Museum, nasty women by Professor Andrew Lear

The feminist concept of the "male gaze" is useful in art criticism. The concept originally comes from film studies, where it is used to discuss the fact that men traditionally controlled the camera, of which women were an object. Men certainly also controlled the brush...

07 Aug Courtesans of Paris tour—in the cemetery!

Posted at 02:13h in courtesans, Paris tour, Shady Ladies, Women's History by Professor Andrew Lear

One of my favorite things to do in Paris—really—is explore the cemeteries. The most famous one is Père Lachaise, where a host of celebs are buried, including most famously Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison. But it is also a great place for learning about the great courtesans of the Belle Epoque. As an example, Chopin is buried there, the lover of George Sand—a scandalous lady if ever there was one—and so is Colette, in whose novels, such as Gigi and Chéri, courtesans are a major theme. But the great cemetery for Paris courtesans is really Montmartre, which is also a lovely place to take a shady, quiet walk in central Paris—right around the corner from the Moulin Rouge —so we take our Shady Ladies Tours Courtesans of Paris tour there, as you can see in the feature photo.

16 Jul Shady Ladies Featured In O, The Oprah Magazine!

Posted at 00:43h in art history, Metropolitan Museum, Shady Ladies by Professor Andrew Lear

We are so grateful for being included on the 'Gratitude Meter' 5 Things We're Smiling About in this month's issue of O, The Oprah Magazine! When it comes to Shady Ladies Tours, Oprah exemplifies the kind of ambitious, glass ceiling breaking woman that our tours are all about!

20 Jun Nasty Women of the MFA Boston

Posted at 00:52h in art history, museum of fine arts, nasty women, Women's History by Professor Andrew Lear

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is of course one of the world's great museums. It is also a great place for a women's history tour. There are very few of the courtesans or mistresses that make up our Shady Ladies tour in New York: I suspect that the Boston collectors of the 19th century were too prudish to buy pictures on themes they knew were racy. But the museum has a great collection of what we're calling (ironically) "nasty women"—feisty, ambitious women from many periods of history.