Edouard Manet and Eva Gonzalès in Paris

Eva Gonzalès (1849–1883) was born in Paris, the daughter of a cult­iv­ated Spanish writer and a cultivated Belgian musician. Her father, a naturalised Frenchman, ran a home that was buzzing with critics, writers and artists, including the director of the newspaper Siècle.

In 1865, young Eva began her art training. She learned drawing from fashionable portrait painter Charles Chaplin who ran a studio for women, including a young Mary Cassatt. In 1869, Eva met Edouard Manet (1832-83) and became his model and his only formal student. Manet apparently knew he wanted to paint a portrait of her at once.

Edouard Manet 

Portrait of Eva Gonzalès, 1870

National Gallery, London

Manet’s Portrait of Eva Gonzalès 1870 was shown at the Salon that same year. She was no dilettante woman, filling in time before marr­iage; rather Manet depicted her as a professional artist, working at her easel.

Edouard Manet never exhibited with the Impressionist painters in their fringy exhibitions in Paris, and encouraged his pupil to remain loyal to the official system as well. So after 1870, she submitted work every year to the Salon. In those early years she was still strongly influenced by Manet and her lovely watercolours achieved great success. And she modelled frequently for other Impressionist artists.

Gonzalès loved painting images of modern Paris - theatre goers, music fans and young women relaxing outdoors. Fortunately the art critics at Salon Exhibit­ions preferred these more genteel pieces and did not consider her a radical. But her work was really only stoutly defended by the few critics who were supportive of all the Impressionists, including my old friend Emile Zola.

As she became less and less committed to painting en plein air, Gonzalès became less committed to Manet’s studio. Coincidentally she was evacuated to Dieppe during the Franco-Prussian War and was away from Paris. 

Eva Gonzales

The Italian Music Hall Box, oil, c1874

The Louvre, Paris

In 1879 she married the engraver Henri Guerard, and used him and her sister Jeanne Gonzales as her models. Her work was exhibited at the offices of the art review L'Art in 1882 and at the Galerie Georges Petit, Paris in 1883. Life was becoming successful.

Then tragedy stuck. Gonzales died unexpectedly in childbirth at 34, immediately following the death of her teacher, Manet. Just two years later, in 1885, a retrospective of 88 of her works was held at the premises of the illustrated weekly mag­az­ine, La Vie Moderne in Paris.

Has Gonzalès’ work stood the test of time? A 1993 exhibition at the Musée Marmottan in Paris' 16th arrondissement suggested her work could at last be considered equal in talent to her two better known contemporaries, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt. We should note again that all three women were born at the same time (in the 1840s), all were upper-middle-class and all were exposed to the same amount of Impressionist support and critical attack. 

Gonzales’ The Italian Music Hall Box, Cassatt’s At the Opera and Renoir’s Le Loge and The First Outing all dealt with the same theme. If I had to choose, I think I would prefer Gonzales' version. Cassatt and Renoir painted young women, agog at the excitement of the crowd and the performance. Gonzales' model was older, calmer, an equal of her male escort.

The catalogue raisonné of her works lists 124 works, of which a number are known only from photographs taken at the exhibition following her death. Of the works listed, 89 were oil paintings, 22 were pastels and 5 were watercolours. Spaightwood galleries said that with attention now paid to women artists no longer required to be genteel, her work is highly desired. But I think she WAS genteel. And the money suggests she IS desirable. One of her small watercolour portraits of her sister, La femme en rose Jeanne Gonzales (1879) sold at Christie's Paris auctions in March 2007 for USA $585,000. Good money, I think.

References:  Edward Lucie-Smith’s Impressionist Women (London 1989) and Nancy Heller’s Women Artists (London 1997) are useful reading. They published some of Gonzales’ works and they located her in Paris’ Impressionist world of the 1870s and early 1880s.