Irishwoman Joanna Heffernan moved in artists’ circles and was admired for her beauty. She was portrayed several times both by the Frenchman Gustave Courbet and the American James Abbott McNeill Whistler. In Courbet's painting, she runs her hand through her loose red hair, while looking at herself in a mirror – an symbolic gesture and a motif associated with themes of defiant sensualism, vanity and the transience of beauty.