STANDING in front of great portraiture in any gallery around the world and the painter is noted in the information panel. What is often missing though are the names of the muses who influenced artists and helped shape their creative vision, writes historian Sharon Slater.
Édouard Manet’s painting of Olympia would not be the same without the model Victorine Meurent. Pablo Picasso’s The Weeping Woman might not have been weeping without the inspiration from Dora Maar.
Although many of the great muses were associated with a single artist, one Limerick woman became the inspiration for two major nineteenth century painters. The beautiful red-haired Joanna Hiffernan became the muse, companion, and collaborator of both James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Gustave Courbet, leaving a subtle but significant mark on the history of European art.
Joanna Hiffernan was born in 1843 in Caherelly, near Ballybricken, County Limerick, to Patrick Hiffernan and Anne Hickey. She was baptised on April 26,1843, in the Roman Catholic church of Ballybricken and Bohermore.
Her early childhood coincided with the devastation of the Great Famine. Like many Irish families seeking survival and opportunity, the Hiffernans moved to London in the late 1840s, where as a Catholic she was in the minority. Her father worked as a calligraphy teacher, but despite his profession, spelling mistakes in Joanna’s surviving letters indicate she likely received only limited formal education.
In 1860, Hiffernan’s life changed dramatically when she met the American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler at a studio in Rathbone Place, London. She was 17 years old at the time, while Whistler was nearly a decade older. The two soon began a relationship and Hiffernan quickly became his primary model and muse.
Her striking appearance of a pale complexion and long copper-red hair made her instantly recognisable. This fascinated Whistler, who once described it in a letter as “the most beautiful hair you have ever seen”. In Victorian culture, red hair was sometimes associated with sensuality and unconventional femininity, which contributed to the provocative reception of some of the paintings in which she appeared.
Hiffernan posed for Whistler’s iconic painting Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl. When the painting was rejected by the Paris Salon and later displayed at the Salon des Refusés, it caused a sensation.
The redhead’s direct gaze and the painting’s unconventional composition challenged traditional portrait conventions and contributed to its controversial reception. The work is now held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.
She was the inspiration for Whistler’s entire “White” series, including Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl and Symphony in White, No. 3. Beyond these paintings, she likely modelled for the female figure in Wapping and appeared in a number of Whistler’s etchings and illustrations.