Jo, La Belle Irlandaise

Jo, La Belle Irlandaise, painted by Gustave Courbet in 1865–66, portrays Joanna Hiffernan, the Irish model and muse who was, at the time, the companion of the American painter James McNeill Whistler. Courbet met Jo while staying with Whistler on the Normandy coast, and this intimate portrait captures her seated before a mirror, absorbed in the private act of gazing at her own reflected image while gathering her strikingly rendered auburn hair.

The painting's sensuous handling of hair and flesh, rendered with Courbet's characteristic tactile brushwork, reveals his fascination with the model's beauty and self-absorption. Courbet was so taken with the subject that he painted several versions, and the theme of a woman lost in contemplation of her own reflection would resonate through his later, more overtly erotic work, cementing Jo's status as one of the era's most celebrated artistic muses.

Held in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, this museum-quality stretched canvas reproduction is printed on premium matte canvas and hand-wrapped around a solid 0.75-inch gallery wrap frame — ready to hang and built to last.