''Jo, the Beautiful Irishwoman'' (french: Jo, la belle irlandaise) is the title of a series of four oil on canvas bust-length portraits by Gustave Courbet. They all show the same redheaded Irish model Joanna Hiffernan (c.1843 – c.1905) looking in a mirror – she also modelled for Whistler. The works have minor differences in details and dimensions but their exact chronology is unknown. They are now in the

Nationalmuseum Nationalmuseum (or National Museum of Fine Arts) is the national gallery of Sweden, located on the peninsula Blasieholmen in central Stockholm. The museum's operations stretches far beyond the borders of Blasieholmen, the nationalmuseum manag ...

, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and a private collection.

History

The nickname in the title indicates the friendship between the artist and his model and is unusual for contemporary portraits of women in that it gives the model's first name. They were probably painted in Trouville, where the painter spent August to November 1865 painting seascapes with Whistler and Joanna. On 17 November, towards the end of his stay, he wrote to his parents that he "bore himself admirably" and told them that he was Whistler's "pupil". Whistler himself painted the portrait ''Courbet by the River'' or ''My Dear Courbet'' during the latter's stay with him.
« Courbet+Whistler ► L’Origine du monde : et si l’histoire était tout autre ? »
by Isabelle Brunnarius, 24 October 2017 on ''France 3 Régions Blog''. Courbet had already painted a series of paintings of women looking in mirrors in 1860 - this had been quite successful with the public and was exhibited in Brussels. The best known from that series, ''Woman with a Mirror'', was painted in Ornans in winter 1859–1860 and is now in the Kunstmuseum Basel – it shows a brunette with a mirror (almost identical to that in ''Jo'') and a prominent décolletage. « Addendum », in: ''Courbet (1819-1877)'', Paris, RMN, 1977, p.230.

Four versions

References

{{Gustave Courbet Portraits of women 19th-century portraits 1865 paintings 1866 paintings Paintings in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Paintings in the collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Paintings in the collection of the Nationalmuseum Stockholm category:Paintings by Gustave Courbet