Joanna Hiffernan

[5] She and her family may have left Ireland for London during the Great Famine of 1845 to 1848, taking up residence at 69 Newman Street.

[3] Her father, Patrick Hiffernan, was described by Whistler's friends, Joseph Pennell and his wife Elizabeth, as being like "Captain Costigan," the drunken Irishman in Thackeray's novel Pendennis.

The artist Walter Greaves, who began tuition with Whistler in 1863, and who knew Hiffernan well,[7] said that she had a son called Harry but no trace of him can be found in official records.

Whistler first met the 17-year-old Jo Hiffernan in 1860 while she was at a studio in Rathbone Place,[8] and in about 1861 began a six-year relationship with her, during which period she modeled for some of his most famous paintings.

However, Hiffernan seems only to have modeled for friends, so perhaps the objections to her made by Whistler's family were based more on social class than on Hifferman's personal character.

In 1866 Whistler gave Hiffernan power of attorney[13] over his affairs while he was in Valparaíso for seven months, making provision for household expenses and giving her the authority to act as an agent in the sale of his works.

During Whistler's absence, Hiffernan travelled to Paris and posed for Courbet in The Sleepers, or Le Sommeil, which depicts two naked women in bed asleep.

[2] He lived with Hiffernan at 5 Thistle Grove as late as 1880 when Whistler was away in Venice with Maud Franklin, his then mistress.

The art collector Charles Lang Freer met Agnes Hiffernan when he was a pallbearer at Whistler's funeral in 1903 when she came forward in heavy mourning to pay her last respects.

[16] Thinking he had just met Joanna, Freer so informed his fellow art patron Louisine Havemeyer (1855–1929) who later recorded the incident as she heard it:"As she raised her veil and I saw ... the thick wavy hair, although it was streaked with grey, I knew at once it was Johanna, the Johanna of Etretat, 'la belle Irlandaise' that Courbet had painted with her wonderful hair and a mirror in her hand.... She stood for a long time beside the coffin—nearly an hour I should think....