JOSHUA Reynolds' portrait of a woman who was immortalised in a children's rhyme may fetch up to £3million at auction.

The unfinished work of Kitty Fisher, who once lived in a mansion that now houses Benenden School, is to be sold at Sotheby's Bond Street auction room in London next Thursday.

According to the 18th century nursery rhyme:

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

The courtesan was the darling of her time and was rumoured to have included the fashionable portrait painter as one of her many lovers.

She astounded her admirers by eating a £1000 guinea bank note on buttered bread, leading to the members of White’s Club to raise a subscription to fund her extravagances. She was said to have spent £12,000 a year and was "the first of her social class to employ liveried servants".

German by birth, in 1766 she married John Norris, the son of the MP for Rye, and went to live at Hemsted, which is now the school.

She was known to be generous to the poor and was liked by local people. But she lived for only four months at Hemsted before she died at the age of 26, either from lead poisoning from the lead-based make up she wore but more likely from smallpox.

Her last wish was to be buried in the village churchyard dressed in her best ball gown.