Near the end of his life, Courbet nostalgically recalled this image of Joanna Hiffernan, a souvenir of his 1865 sojourn in Trouville, in a letter to James McNeill Whistler: "I still have the portrait of Jo, which I will never sell. Everyone admires it." This work has been convincingly identified as "the portrait of Jo" that Courbet kept for himself, a replica with minor variations of the original. It likely was made in response to an offer to purchase the original, and it subsequently served as the prototype for two additional iterations. It was not unusual for Courbet to execute multiple copies of his popular subjects in response to market demand.