Exhibition preview·Paris
She chose the Salon over the Impressionists and died at 36. Paris finally gives Eva Gonzalès a retrospective
The Petit Palais in Paris has mounted a retrospective of more than 100 works by Eva Gonzalès, Édouard Manet's most devoted pupil, timed with Art Basel Paris week. The show argues that the 19th-century painter — who never exhibited with the Impressionists — deserves attention in her own right.
The Petit Palais in Paris is staging a major retrospective of Eva Gonzalès, the 19th-century French painter best known as Édouard Manet's most devoted pupil, bringing together more than 100 works, roughly two-thirds of them by her hand. Timed to coincide with Art Basel Paris week, it is presented as the closest attempt since her 1885 posthumous show to restore the scale of her achievement.
There is substance to the claim that she was never really an Impressionist: Gonzalès never took part in any of the group's exhibitions. "Her strategy was, like Manet's, to establish herself at the Salon," says conservator Marianne Mathieu. She left the studio of her first teacher, Charles Chaplin — who did not believe a single woman should have her own studio — in 1868 and became Manet's pupil a year later. When she submitted to the 1870 Salon she still registered as Chaplin's pupil, though her Enfant de troupe (1869–70) plainly drew on Manet's Le Fifre; the French state acquired it, the only work of hers to enter a public collection in her lifetime. That same Salon, Manet showed his towering Portrait d'Eva Gonzalès.
The contrast with Berthe Morisot is instructive. Both came from cultivated bourgeois families, signed their maiden names after marriage, used their sisters as models and knew Manet intimately — but Morisot broke with his tutelage after he substantially retouched one of her paintings in 1870, while Gonzalès embraced his guidance. Where Morisot sought emancipation from artistic affiliation, Gonzalès "boldly claimed her allegiance" to a controversial figure.
She died in 1883 at 36, confining her output to portraits, domestic scenes and still lifes, the subjects deemed proper for women artists. Her son Jean-Raimond worked largely alone to keep her legacy alive, unlike Morisot's daughter Julie Manet, who had Mallarmé, Monet and Degas in her corner. Nor did French museums help: the Musée d'Orsay holds only the 1874 pastel La Matinée rose, and more than 135 years passed before the Petit Palais acquired the oil La Servante in 2021. "What struck me," says co-curator Stéphanie Cantarutti, "was that she was interesting in her own right."
