Joanna Hiffernan

Biography

In 1861 Whistler wrote to Henri Fantin-Latour that he could not bring himself to work on “Wapping”: all he could see was Jo’s head, and she had “the most beautiful hair you ever saw”. He described the hair as red, but not golden and not copper, “like some Venetian woman in a dream”. Almost no other testimony about her is as vivid.

Joanna Hiffernan was born around 1843 in Limerick, into a Catholic family, the daughter of Patrick Hiffernan and his wife. The family may have moved to London during the Great Famine. Her mother died in 1862; she also had a sister, Bridget Agnes. Her surviving letters suggest that she had only a modest education. Whistler saw her in 1860 in a studio on Rathbone Place; she was about seventeen. From 1861 they lived together.

She posed for him often. In Paris in the winter of 1861–1862, in a studio on the Boulevard des Batignolles, he painted “Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl”: she stands on a bearskin in a plain white dress, with a lily in her lowered hand. In 1864–1865 came “Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl”, in which she leans against a mantelpiece and looks into a mirror. In the third Symphony (1865–1867) another model, Milly Jones, sits beside her in the picture. Joanna is also in “Wapping” (1860–1864), the red-haired woman in the foreground, and in the 1861 etching “Jo”, where her hair hangs loose and unkempt. There is also the etching “Weary” (1863), showing her asleep on a chair. By all accounts she also drew and painted herself, but she did not exhibit her work.

Whistler’s family disapproved of the relationship. In the eyes of that milieu, an unmarried artist’s model was little better than a prostitute. It seems to me that the objections came more from social prejudice than from any acquaintance with Joanna herself: she apparently posed only for the artist’s friends. When his mother came from America in 1864, Joanna had to move out for a time. Whistler’s quarrel with Alphonse Legros in 1863 was also, possibly, her doing. That same year she attended séances with him at Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s house in Chelsea.

In the summer and autumn of 1865 they lived in Trouville, on the Normandy coast. There Whistler introduced her to Courbet, who was staying in rooms in the casino and giving painting lessons. That year Courbet painted “La Belle Irlandaise” (Joanna with a mirror in her left hand, her right adjusting her hair) and the study “Portrait of Jo”, with her hair pulled back. He later repeated the painting four times, and these versions are now in various museums.

In 1866 Whistler went to Valparaíso for seven months. He left Joanna power of attorney over his affairs, money for the household and the right to sell his work. To dealers she presented herself as Mrs. Abbott. During this time she travelled to Paris and posed for Courbet’s “Le Sommeil” (“Sleep”): two naked women embrace on a rumpled white sheet, and a string of pearls has broken on the bed. She probably had an affair with Courbet then. Attributing to her “L’Origine du monde” of the same year is not usual today: most specialists see the dancer Constance Quéniaux there, and those who favour Joanna have no evidence. When Whistler returned, he left her. He did, however, later make a will in her favour.

Soon afterwards she looked after Whistler’s son Charles Hanson (born 1870), whom he had fathered with a parlour maid, Louisa Fanny Hanson. In 1880, while his father was in Venice with Maud Franklin, the boy lived with Joanna in London, on Thistle Grove. That same year his father sent him a letter with greetings to “Aunt Jo”. The 1881 census lists her, with her sister and Charles, as visitors of the accountant Charles Singleton, whom Bridget married in 1901.

After 1880 there is almost no information.

In a letter of 18 December 1882, Courbet’s sister Juliette reported seeing “the beautiful Irish girl” in Nice: she was selling antiques and some pictures by Courbet. She was called Mademoiselle Abbott. It was said that Joanna had married a man named Abbott, but this may be a misunderstanding arising from the earlier “Mrs. Abbott”.

The year of her death is unclear. By one account she died on 3 July 1886 at a house on Millman Street in Holborn. By others she lived until 1903: the collector Charles Lang Freer, a pallbearer at Whistler’s funeral, said that a woman in deep mourning stood by the coffin for about an hour, and that by her hair and eyes he recognised Jo. According to one version, this was her sister Agnes.