La belle Irlandaise (Portrait of Jo)

Gustave Courbet's 'La belle Irlandaise' — the Portrait of Jo — depicts Joanna Hiffernan, the red-haired Irish model and mistress of James McNeill Whistler who also sat for Courbet during the period of his friendship with Whistler in the early 1860s. Courbet was so fascinated by Hiffernan's remarkable copper-red hair that he painted her multiple times, producing several nearly identical versions of the composition showing her admiring herself in a mirror. This subject — the beautiful woman with extraordinary hair, self-absorbed in her reflection — sits at the boundary of portraiture and genre painting. The painting was copied and re-created by Courbet at different dates, making precise dating complex. Its direct sensual appeal represents his engagement with femininity outside academic idealization.

Courbet renders Jo's famous red hair with physical relish — heavy, richly loaded paint building the copper curls with a tactile pleasure that made this his most often-repeated female subject. The face, by contrast, is modeled smoothly. The composition typically shows her at three-quarter view, one hand raised to her hair, the mirror at the picture edge.