Joanna Hifferan
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Joanna Hifferan , rarely also Joanna Heffernan (* around 1843; † after 1903), was an Irish woman who was portrayed several times by James McNeill Whistler and Gustave Courbet between 1861 and 1868 . She was Whistler's preferred model and mistress at the time. The most famous paintings depicting Joanna Hifferan, or Jo for short, are Symphony in White No. 1, Girl in White , Symphony in White No. 2 and Symphony in White No. 3 by Whistler, and La Belle Irlandaise and Le Sommeil by Courbet.
biography
Relationship with James McNeill Whistler
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Joanna Hifferan was the daughter of Irishman Patrick Hifferan and his wife Katherine Hifferan, who died in 1862. Whistler first met Joanna in 1860 in a studio on Rathbone Place, London. She was Whistler's first model in 1861 for his portrait Symphony in White No. 1, Girl in White, in his Paris studio on the Boulevard des Batignolles. She stayed with him as his partner and model for at least the next six years. In a letter to Henri Fantin-Latour in 1861, Whistler described the woman and the impossibility of painting her while he was working on the painting Wapping :
- "[...] I tried to give her an expression! really my friend! a real expression - if I could only describe her head - she has the most beautiful hair you have ever seen! a red, but not gold or copper - like a Venetian in a dream! - the skin golden-white or yellow, if you like it [...] "
Whistler's mother and relatives were unhappy with the relationship, as in their eyes every unmarried woman who made herself available as a model - which in popular belief also meant naked - was a prostitute . Accordingly, his mother asked him to create an independent seriousness for Joanna Hifferan with the inheritance of an aunt. During a visit from Whistler's mother from America in 1864, Joanna moved out of their shared apartment on Lindsey Row, London.
Jo and Gustave Courbet
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Whistler admired Joanna Hifferan, especially her appearance and her red hair, which earned her the nickname fiery Jo ("fiery jo"). Neither his family nor his friends and acquaintances were able to change his attitude towards her, and the tangible dispute he had with his French painter colleague Alphonse Legros in 1863 can probably be traced back to Jo . In 1865 he introduced Joanna Hifferan to his friend Gustave Courbet in Trouville-sur-Mer , who in the same year painted the painting La Belle Irlandaise in four versions as well as the oil sketch Portrait de Jo of her.
In 1866, when Whistler was in Valparaíso , he commissioned Joanna Hifferan to sell his paintings. She called herself Mrs. Abbott at the time, after Whistler's middle name. In the same year Joanna traveled to Paris and made herself available as a model for one of the two naked sleepers for Courbet's erotic painting Le Sommeil . She probably had an affair with Courbet too. After returning from Valparaiso, Whistler separated from her, but without a fight.
Biographical Notes on Post-Whistler Separation
Joanna stayed in London for a few years and it was claimed that she would take care of Whistler's illegitimate son John - who was unknown and likely nonexistent. In addition, the biographer Walter Greaves named a son named Harry, who is also otherwise not proven. Whistler's son Charles Hanson Whistler was born in 1870 to Louisa Fanny Hanson and lived for a short time in Thistle Grove Lane in London with her sister Bridget Agnes Hifferan. During Whistler's trip to Venice with his then lover Maud Franklin in the summer of 1880, Joanna Hifferan took care of the boy again. That same year Whistler sent his son a letter greetings for Auntie Jo .
Little is known about Joanna Hifferan's life after 1880. Courbet's sister Juliette reported [Courbet was never married. Source: Courbet. A dream of the modern. Hatje Cantz, 2010. S. 287ff.] In a letter dated December 18, 1882, that she had met the beautiful Irish girl in Nice , where she was selling antiques and also had some pictures by Courbet. She is said to have lived there since the Franco-German War and remained unmarried. She is also said to have called herself Mrs. Abbott . Whistler's lover Maud Franklin bore the same name after she married the American RHS Abbott and moved to Cannes in the south of France .
The last testimony of Joanna Hiffernan came from the art collector Charles Freer , who after Whistler's death at the mortuary was to receive mourners. He told of a woman who came and stood quietly by the coffin for about an hour - he recognized her as Jo through her eyes and her hair.
photos
Joanna Hifferan probably worked as a model before she met Whistler, but no pictures of her are known from that time.
James McNeill Whistler: Symphony in White
James McNeill Whistler painted and drew Joanna Hifferan a number of times during their relationship, and she also represented the model for various other female figures in his pictures. The most famous paintings in which Joanna can be seen are his three pictures called the Symphony in White . He portrayed her alone on Symphony in White No. 1, Girl in White and on Symphony in White No. 2, Girl in White , while he portrayed her in Symphony in White No. 3 together with the professional model Milly Jones , the future wife of the actor Stuart Robson .
In the picture Symphony in White No. 1, Girl in White , painted in 1862 , she stands in a white dress that was simply cut for the time in front of a curtain on the skin of a bear. She looks straight ahead at the viewer of the picture with a rather rigid, transfigured look and holds a single lily in her left hand. In Symphony in White No. 2, Girl in White (1864), she stands leaning against a chimney and looks into the reflective surfaces behind it. The left arm lies on the mantelpiece, the right hangs down and holds a painted fan. On symphony in white no. 3 (1865-67) finally lies half on a white bench and supports with her right hand her head, while the left arm is on the back and the legs are beaten down. Milly Jones is sitting in front of the bench and looks in the direction of Joanna Hifferan. In front of her there is another painted fan. All three pictures form a series due to Whistler's chosen name Symphony in White and their numbering, which was not continued after the third picture. The connecting elements are the relatively simple white clothes and the flowers that appear in all pictures, as well as the painted fan used in the last two pictures.
One of the lesser-known Whistler paintings in which Joanna Hifferan served as a model is the port scene in Wapping from 1860/64 . Here Whistler used Joanna as a model for the red-haired woman seated in the foreground. In addition to these paintings, Joanna was also the model for a number of sketches, drawings and etchings. The etching Jo , created in 1861, deserves a special mention here, which is considered very atypical in comparison to all other portraits of Whistler. Joanna Hifferan is shown from the front with loose and wild hair. The etching Weary 1863, which shows Joanna asleep in a chair, and several associated drawings of the sleeping woman are also known.
Wapping , 1860/64
Jo , 1861
Weary , 1863
The Sleeper , 1863
Gustave Courbet: La Belle Irlandaise
Gustave Courbet painted Joanna Hifferan for the first time in the fall of 1865, when she and Whistler came to Trouville on the Normandy coast . Courbet had lived here in an apartment in the casino since September and gave courses in painting. That year he painted La Belle Irlandaise , a portrait painting in which Joanna is shown with a hand mirror while she runs her left hand through her hair. The model's vivid red hair is clearly shown in this picture and attracts the viewer's gaze. Courbet made four copies of the painting, which are now preserved in various museums and collections. In the same year he painted another head portrait of her called Portrait de Jo , this time with her hair tied back.
The erotic painting Le Sommeil was created in 1866 , in which Joanna Hifferan served as a model for one of the two sleeping women. Both women in the picture are undressed and lie entwined as a couple on a white sheet, making the scene for the viewer a representation of a lesbian scene after a night of love. This is reinforced by a torn string of pearls on the heavily rifled sheets.
The main disagreement is whether Joanna Hifferan should also have been the model for one of Courbet's most controversial works, the painting L'Origine du monde ( The Origin of the World , 1866). The painting, commissioned by the Turkish merchant Khalil Bey , shows a close-up view of the hairy vulva of a woman lying on a bed or sofa with open thighs. The cutout is chosen so that the rest of the body, especially the woman's face, cannot be seen, with the exception of the abdomen and a breast with a nipple. Since the picture was taken in the same year as Le Sommeil and Joanna was considered Courbet's preferred model at the time, this suggestion is reasonable - however, there is no evidence that it is actually shown here, and the very dark pubic hair has several critics doubt it that this vulva belongs to a red-haired woman. The presumption was probably first expressed in 1978 by Sophie Monneret and adopted in 1995 by a number of critics such as Jean-Jaques Fernier , Michèle Haddad and Chantal Humbert in the catalog of the Courbet L'Amour exhibition . Humbert assumed, however, that the creation could be more complex; it suggested a composition from a picture by Joanna Hifferan and Augustine Legaton , a contemporary star of early pornographic photography. In her 2000 novel J'étais l'origine du monde (I was the origin of the world), the French novelist Christine Orban portrayed Joanna as Courbet's lover and model for the picture.
literature
- Richard Dorment, Margaret F. MacDonald: James McNeill Whistler. Tate Gallery Publications, London 1994; Pages 74-84
- Nicholas Dali: The Woman in White: Whistler, Hifferan, Courbet, Du Maurier. Modernism / modernity 12 (1), 2005; Pages 1-25. Full text, PDF
Web links
Footnotes
- ^ Letter from Whistler to Henri Fantin-Latour, January / June 1861; Original text in French and English translation at the Center for Whistler Studies; Excerpt: je suis arrivé à y mettre une expression! tais toi mon cher! une vraie expression - ah mais que je te la décrie, la tête - C'est des cheveux les plus beaux que tu n'aie jamais vu! d'un rouge non pas doré mais cuivré - comme tout ce qu'on a revé de Venitienne! - une peau blanche jaune ou dorée si tu veux.
- ↑ Letter from Whistler to his son Charles James Whistler Hanson, May 2, 1880; Original text in English at the Center for Whistler Studies
- ↑ after Dorment 1994 and Dali 2005
- ^ Dali 2005, page 21
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hifferan, Joanna |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Yo |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Irish wife, model and mistress of James McNeill Whistler, model of Gustave Courbet |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1843 |
| DATE OF DEATH | after 1903 |