Joanna Hiffernan

Joanna "Jo" Hiffernan (sometimes Heffernan; ca. 1843 – after 1903) was an Irish-born artists' model and muse who was romantically linked with American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler and French painter Gustave Courbet. The red-haired, Victorian beauty is thought to be the model for Courbet's controversial piece "L'Origine du monde".

Early life

Hiffernan was a Roman Catholic. Her father, Patrick Hiffernan, is described by Whistler's friends, Joseph Pennell and his wife Elizabeth, as being like "Captain Costigan," the drunken Irishman in Thackeray's novel "Pendennis". The Pennells also described him as "a teacher of polite chirography (calligraphy)" who used to speak of Whistler as "me son-in-law." [Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, (1908)] Her mother, Katherine Hiffernan, died in 1862, aged 44. Joanna Hiffernan had a sister called Bridget Agnes Hiffernan, later Singleton. The artist Walter Greaves (1846–1930), who began tuition with Whistler in 1861 and who knew Hiffernan well [http://www.louisekosman.com/artists/artist_303.php] , claimed that she had a son called Harry but no trace of him can be found in official records.

Artist's model

Whistler first met Hiffernan in 1860 while she was at a studio in Rathbone Place [Ionides, Luke, 'Memories', Paris, 1925] , and she went on to have a 6-year relationship with him, during which period she modeled 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." [Elizabeth Robins and Joseph Pennell, The Whistler Journal (Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1921), p. 121.]

However, Whistler's family did not approve of Hifferman, as unmarried artists' models, and especially those who posed nude, were considered at that time to be little better than prostitutes. Like many other models at that time, Hiffernan seems only to have modeled for friends, so perhaps the objections to her made by Whistler's family were based more on class than on Hifferman's personal character. [The Victorian Nude: Sexuality, Morality, and Art by Alison Smith Published by Manchester University Press, 1996 ISBN 0719044030 pg 29] When Whistler's mother visited from America in 1864, alternative accommodation had to be found for Hiffernan, who also seems to have been the cause of Whistler's quarrel with Alphonse Legros in 1863. [http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/biog/Hiff_J.htm]

She was in France with Whistler during the summer of 1861, and while in Paris during the winter of 1861-62 she sat for ", for whom she later modeled.

Courbet painted a full-length, life-sized portrait of Hiffernan that same winter in a studio at 18 Boulevard Pigalle in Paris. As she was his favourite model during this period, art historians speculate that Hiffernan was also the model for Courbet's 1866 erotic painting "L'Origine du monde", which, with his suspected affair with her, led to the breakup of the friendship between Whistler and Courbet. In spite of Hiffernan’s red hair contrasting with the darker pubic hair of "L’Origine du monde", the hypothesis prevails that Hiffernan was its model. After his breakup with Hiffernan, Whistler returned to the United States, leaving a will in her favour. Hiffernan by this stage was painting and drawing a bit herself. [ [http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/biog/Hiff_J.htm] ]

Courbet painted Hiffernan again in 1866, in "La belle Irlandaise" ("Portrait of Jo"). Indeed, during his artistic career, Courbet painted four portraits of Hiffernan.

Hiffernan attended séances with Whistler at Dante Gabriel Rossetti's house in Chelsea in 1863, and spent the summer and autumn of 1865 in Trouville with Whistler. In 1866, Whistler gave Hiffernan power of attorney [ [http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/letters/11480.asp] ] over his affairs while he was in Valparaiso for 7 months, making provision for household expenses and giving her the authority to act as an agent in the sale of his works. She called herself 'Mrs Abbott' during this period, especially when selling Whistler's works around dealers. During Whistler's absence Hiffernan traveled to Paris and posed for Courbet in "The Sleepers", or , which depicts two naked women in bed asleep. It is likely that she had an affair with Courbet at this time, considering the fact that she and Whistler parted soon after.

Later years

After she and Whistler parted, Hiffernan helped to raise Whistler's son, Charles James Whistler Hanson (1870-1935) [Patricia de Montfort, "White Muslin: Joanna Hiffernan and the 1860s," in Whistler, Women, and Fashion (Frick Collection, New York, in association with Yale University Press, New Haven, 2003), p. 79.] , the product of an affair with a parlour maid, Louisa Fanny Hanson. [ [http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/letters/01954.asp] ] He lived with her at 5 Thistle Grove as late as 1880 when Whistler was away in Venice with Maud Franklin, his then mistress. [http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/letters/01954.asp]

Little is known of Hiffernan after 1880. A woman reported to Juliette Courbet (1831–1915), the sister of Gustave Courbet, in a letter of 18 December 1882, that "the beautiful Irish girl" was in Nice, where she sold antiques and some pictures by Courbet. Hiffernan married some time after 1881, probably on the Continent, to a man named Abbot, as in later life she often referred to herself as 'Mrs Abbot'.

The art collector Charles Lang Freer met Hiffernan when he was a pallbearer at Whistler's funeral in 1903 when she came forward in heavy mourning to pay her last respects. ['Pretty women: Charles Lang Freer and the ideal of feminine beauty'.'Magazine Antiques' November 2006 by Susan A. Hobbs] His fellow art patron Louisine Havemeyer (1855-1829) later recorded the incident as she heard it from Freer:

"As she raised her veil and I saw ... the thick wavy hair, although itwas streaked with gray, I knew at once it was Johanna, the Johanna of Etretat, 'la belle Irlandaise' that Courbet had painted with her wonderful hair and a mirror in her hand.... She stood for a long time beside the coffin--nearly an hour I should think.... I could not help being touched by the feeling she showed toward her old friend. "Did Maud [Franklin] come?" [Havemeyer] asked. "Yes" answered Mr. Freer, "the same afternoon. She had come all the way from Paris and was very much affected as I uncovered Whistler's face for her to see him." ... [One could see, Freer mused] "that the real drama of [Whistler's] life was bound up in the love of [these] devoted women." [Louisine W. Havemeyer, Sixteen to Sixty: Memoirs of a Collector (1961; reprint Ursus Press, New York, 1993), pp. 212-213.]

Legacy

Hiffernan is the narrator in French writer Christine Orban's 2000 novel "J’étais l’origine du monde" ("I was the Origin of the world"), published in 2000. In the novel Hiffernan is Courbet’s lover and the model for the famous painting. Bernard Teyssèdre, in "Le roman de l’origine" ("The Novel of the Origin", 1996), whose main character is the painting itself, also suggests that Joanna Hiffernan was the model for the painting.

References

External links

* [http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/biog/Hiff_J.htm Hiffernan's Biography]
* [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Joanna_Hiffernan Hiffernan on Wikimedia]
* [http://www.mr-whistlers-art.info/life/h_j.shtml Short Biography on 'Mr Whistler's Art' website]
* [http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/letters/01954.asp Letter from Whistler regarding Hiffernan]
* [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Joanna_Hiffernan Images of Hiffernan on Wikimedia]