Whistler depicts the celebrated Irish beauty Joanna Hiffernan—his model and mistress—sunk in an armchair, engulfed by a long skirt and loose hair, her lips parted as if to speak. The delicate paper captures the soft, drypoint lines and conveys a sensual mood. The light sketch of a girl’s head (in the lower left of the sheet) suggests that Whistler first worked on the plate from the opposite direction with another subject in mind. Drypoint lines were scratched directly into the copper to produce this famous image. [https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/365015] Whistler's confidence as an etcher is seen at its fullest in this portrait of Jo Hiffernan, his companion in the 1860s. The artist was deeply influenced by Rembrandt, and it is probably due to this that he felt comfortable leaving the lower half of the sheet with only the barest of drawn outlines. Like Rembrandt, he too experimented with different kinds of papers; here, the tan Japan paper is an important choice for a print that leaves so much paper exposed. [https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/372546]