Eva Gonzalès was born in Paris on April 19, 1849 to a cultured pair of parents who influenced her passion for art. Her literary father was a Spanish national who had become a French citizen, and her mother was from Belgium and of notable musical talent. The Gonzalès home hosted many interesting visitors and young Eva grew up amid an environment of fascinating discourse and talent.
Meeting Manet
Eva’s first teacher was portrait artist Charles Chaplin, and she later studied with the charismatic Edouard Manet. Like Manet, Gonzalès focused on acceptance by the Paris Salon and did not participate in the independent exhibits of the French Impressionists. Her work, however, paralleled certain impressionistic tendencies and as a contemporary of the French Impressionists, she is generally included among them from a historical perspective.
Eva was Manet’s sole official pupil and managed to stay the course with her forceful instructor. She also absorbed one of his most significant teachings—to create fluidly and not be obsessed with form and detail. Manet, praising Gonzalès’ “dark beauty,” began their relationship by having her pose for a portrait in 1869. In the painting, Eva is indeed at her easel but seems more decorative than earnestly engrossed, an effect no doubt coming more from Manet than Gonzalès herself.
Eva and Berthe Morisot
Interestingly, Manet had befriended artist Berthe Morisot before taking Gonzalès under his wing, and after Eva’s arrival he may have made a point of using Gonzalès to pique Morisot’s jealousy and undermine her confidence. Morisot was more assertive and hoping for equality in her relationship with Manet, while Gonzalès remained a willing and receptive student. Gonzalès was also several years younger than Morisot and, according to Berthe’s irritable letter to her sister on the subject, Manet praised Eva as having “bearing” and “perseverance” whereas “I’m not capable of anything.”
Eva’s style would definitely show the influence of Manet and at times be mistaken for his own work, but there were still subtle marks of independence in brushstrokes or intensities of color. Additionally, Gonzalès’ paintings of women in particular show more of a a heightened connection with the subject than similar efforts by her male contemporaries.
Final Years and Legacy
Gonzalès left Paris to spend time in Dieppe during the Franco-Prussian War, and she eventually returned to the city and later married Henri Guerard. She continued to paint and pursue her artistic career, a path tragically cut short by her death following postpartum complications in May of 1883. Manet had died just a few days earlier while Eva was giving birth to a son almost at the same time.
Eva was reportedly grief-stricken upon hearing the news, piecing together funeral floral arrangements for Manet from her own sickbed. In the years that followed, Eva’s younger sister Jeanne—also an aspiring artist—married Eva’s widower husband and became the second Madame Guerard.
Eva Gonzalès’ works can be found in various museums worldwide, including the Musée d’Orsay, the Art Institute of Chicago and Washington D.C.‘s National Gallery of Art.
Sources
- Eva Gonzalès – Modernist Journals Project
- Dictionary of Women Artists, Vol. 1 – Delia Gaze (Fitzroy & Dearborn Publishers, 1997)
- Berthe Morisot – Anne Higonnet (University of California Press, 1995)
