Eva Gonzalès was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 Impressionist

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

 painter.

Eva Gonzalès was born in Paris into the family of the writer Emmanuel Gonzalèz. In 1865, she began her professional training and took lessons in drawing from the society portraitist Charles Chaplin.

Gonzalès became a pupil of the artist Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....

 in February 1869. Manet is said to have begun a portrait of her at once which was completed on 12 March 1870 and exhibited at Salon in that year.

Like her teacher, Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....

, she never exhibited with the Impressionist painters in their controversial exhibitions in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, but she is considered part of the group because of her painting style. She was Manet's only formal student and modeled frequently for several members of the Impressionist school.

Until 1872, she was strongly influenced by Manet but later developed her own, more personal style.

During the Franco-Prussian War

Franco-Prussian War

The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...

 she evacuated to Dieppe

Dieppe, Seine-Maritime

Dieppe is a commune in the Seine-Maritime department in France. In 1999, the population of the whole Dieppe urban area was 81,419.A port on the English Channel, famous for its scallops, and with a regular ferry service from the Gare Maritime to Newhaven in England, Dieppe also has a popular pebbled...

.

She married Henri Guérard, brother of the graphic artist Henri Guérard, and used him and her sister Jeanne Gonzales as the subjects for many of her paintings.

Her work was exhibited at the offices of the art review L'Art in 1882 and at the Galerie Georges Petit in 1883. Her career was cut short when she died in childbirth at the age of thirty-four, exactly six days after the death of her teacher, Manet.

In 1885, after her death a retrospective of 88 works was held at the Salons de La Vie Moderne.

Further reading

• Marie-Caroline Sainsaulieu, Jacques de Mons: Eva Gonzalès: 1849 - 1883; étude critique et catalogue raisonné . Paris 1990
• Marianne Delafond: Les femmes impressionnistes: Mary Cassatt, Eva Gonzalès, Berthe Morisot. Paris 1993 ISBN 2-85047-227-1