Jo, the Beautiful Irishwoman

Jo, the Beautiful Irishwoman (French: Jo, la belle irlandaise) is the title of a series of four oil on canvas bust-length portraits by Gustave Courbet.

The works have minor differences in details and dimensions but their exact chronology is unknown.

On 17 November, towards the end of his stay, he wrote to his parents that he "bore himself admirably" and told them that he was Whistler's "pupil".

[2] Courbet had already painted a series of paintings of women looking in mirrors in 1860 - this had been quite successful with the public and was exhibited in Brussels.

The best known from that series, Woman with a Mirror, was painted in Ornans in winter 1859–1860 and is now in the Kunstmuseum Basel – it shows a brunette with a mirror (almost identical to that in Jo) and a prominent décolletage.