Édouard, Eva and Jeanne

Édouard Manet "Portrait of Eva Gonzalès" 1870  National Gallery, London

Édouard Manet (1832-1883) painted this charming but somewhat mysterious portrait of his student Eva Gonzalès in 1870. The mystery stems from the manner in which he has portrayed her. Whether intentionally or inadvertently, in this pose she appears very much as an amateur playing at painting...she looks as light sweet and and bouffant as a meringue with her hair dressed in careful curls and her person arrayed in a frothy white silk dress, with nary an apron or smock in sight. A creamy peony rests at her feet. Perhaps in homage? Nonetheless, the piece she is purportedly painting is not even her work, but one of Manet's own paintings. It is hard to believe this painting would have been meant as an intentional slight on the professionalism of Gonzalès, as from all accounts there were good relations between pupil and teacher. It could simply be that Gonzalès asked to be portrayed in her finest day gown, and to keep it clean they devised this arrangement of an already finished painting, undipped brushes (and most likely empty palette, it tilts away from our eyes but we can guess it is pristine, merely a prop here.) Or perhaps, Manet was considering taking up society portraiture and painted this as a trial run, using his lovely student as a guinea pig. We'll never know, but it is interesting to speculate!

Eva Gonzalès "La jeune élève (Portrait of Jeanne Gonzalès )" 1871-72   Private Collection

Eva Gonzalès (1849-1883) was born and died in Paris. Her father was a well-known writer of Spanish origin, but French citizenship, and her mother was a Belgian of noted musical talent. The family salon was a meeting place for critics and writers.  She began her art training in 1865 by studying drawing with portraitist Charles Chaplin who ran a private art studio for women. Gonzalès was a talented and serious student. Eventually she rented her own studio in the Rue Bréda and under Chaplin’s guidance made figure compositions and landscapes, exhibiting three pieces at the Salon of 1870 as his student.  That year she was also the subject of a fourth painting, the portrait by Manet. In 1869 she met Manet, and began working with him as well, as his student and also, as we have seen, modelling for him on occasion. She is considered Manet's only "official" student. 

Her career rapidly gained momentum, and her work began attracting serious attention from a number of critics. In 1879, Gonzalès married the highly respected graphic artist Henri Guérard (1846-1897.) She continued to paint after her marriage, frequently using her sister Jeanne and her husband as models. However, after three and half years of marriage Gonzalès gave birth to a son, developed childbirth complications and died.  (It is frequently noted, for no reason that I can fathom except the odd random chance of it, that she passed away only a few days after her teacher Manet.) In1885 a retrospective of her work, displaying over eighty pieces, was held at the Salons de La Vie Moderne. Gonzalès' sister Jeanne, who was very close with her older sister and had modelled for her frequently, also became a professional artist. She married her sister's widowed husband in 1888, and her name crops up in later auction records as Jeanne Guérard-Gonzalès (1852-1924.)