TO THE acclaimed American artist James McNeill Whistler, she was a muse, lover, defender against debtors and agent to sell his sketches.
But to the rest of the world, Limerick woman Joanna Hiffernan is ‘The White Girl’ of Whistler’s famous portrait.
And now she is the subject of an exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, ‘Whistler’s Woman in White’.
Born in 1843 to Anne (née Hickey) and Patrick Hiffernan, Joanna’s family are believed to have left Limerick for London during the Great Famine of 1845 to 1848.
Whistler first met the 17-year-old Jo Hiffernan in 1860 while she was at a studio in Rathbone Place and began a six-year relationship with her, during which she modelled for some of his most famous paintings.
She is immortalised in his picture of her in 1862 as The White Girl, in which she stands in a simple white dress against a white curtain, which set off her striking red hair.
Whistler’s contemporary, Gustav Courbet, painted her as ‘La Belle Irlandaise’.
The long sittings as Whistler’s model may have affected her health, as she developed a persistent cough after the completion of The White Girl, which has been attributed to the lead in the white paint they both inhaled during her lengthy sittings. She died in 1903.
The exhibition, ‘Whistler’s Woman in White: Joanna Hiffernan’ runs until May 22.
