The Fiery Redhead

James Abbot McNeill Whistler - Symphony in White Number 2: The Little White Girl, 1864, 765 x 511 mm (approx. 30 x 20 in) - Tate Modern, London (click photo for larger image)Fiery redhead Joanna Hiffernan was romantically linked to two famed artists of the late 19th-century—the American born painter James McNeil Abbot Whistler (1834-1903) and the French painter Gustave Courbet (1819-1877). Whistler first met Hiffernan in 1860 and she went on to have a 6-year relationship with him, during which period she model\led for some of his most famous paintings. Physically striking, Hiffernan's personality was even more impressive. Whistler's biographers and friends, the Pennells, wrote of her,  "She was not only beautiful. She was intelligent, she was sympathetic. She gave Whistler the constant companionship he could not do without.” Whistler's family did not approve of Hiffernan, as unmarried artists' models, and especially those who posed nude, were considered at that time to be little better than prostitutes. 

Gustave Courbet (French, 1819-1877) - Jo, La Belle Irlandaise - 1865–66 - Oil on canvas - 22 x 26 in. (55.9 x 66 cm) - H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 - Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC (click photo for larger image)Gustave Courbet referred to Joanna as “the beautiful Irish girl”—and painted our featured piece just a year after Whistler’s work. She was in France with Whistler during the summer of 1861, and in Paris during the winter of 1861–62. That’s when she probably met Whistler's friend and fellow artist, Gustave Courbet, with whom she also had an affair. Despite all, Whistler gave Joanna full power of attorney over his affairs—and a household—when he traveled to Chile in 1866 for 7 months. She was also favored in Whistler’s Will.