Eva Gonzalès by Édouard Manet

Eva Gonzalès holds a brush against a flower picture, yet her eyes turn away from it. Her outstretched arm crosses a dark background, while a great sweep of white fabric fills the lower half of the canvas. Palette, brushes and easel identify her profession as clearly as the face identifies the sitter.

Édouard Manet's portrait was probably begun in the summer of 1869 and completed in March 1870, when Gonzalès was preparing her own debut at the Paris Salon. The oil painting's visible painted area measures 191.1 × 133.4 cm.^[1] Its scale gives a young artist a commanding presence, while the already finished, framed picture before her makes the apparent act of painting more complicated than it first appears.

The Artist behind the Portrait

Eva Gonzalès, born in 1847, had already studied painting before meeting Manet. Her first important teacher was Charles Chaplin, whose studio offered women opportunities for professional training. Alfred Stevens introduced her to Manet in February 1869, and she became his only formal pupil.^[2] That distinction describes a teaching relationship, rather than the beginning of her entire artistic education.

Her family belonged to a cultivated Parisian circle. Her father, Emmanuel Gonzalès, was a writer; her mother, Marie Céline Raguet, was a musician and singer. Eva's younger sister Jeanne also became an artist and served repeatedly as her model.^[2] Family life would provide Gonzalès with both subjects and practical support for her work.

In 1870 she entered the Salon with three works, including The Bugler, a figure painting dated 1869–70.^[2] Manet's portrait therefore appeared at a moment when its sitter was becoming visible to the public through paintings of her own. The woman holding the palette was taking part in the same exhibition system as the artist portraying her.

The Outstretched Arm and the White Dress

Gonzalès sits on the right, turned towards an easel at the left. Her right arm extends almost horizontally, guiding a long brush towards the blue vase in the flower picture. Her left arm bends beneath a broad brown palette. Several brushes and a mahlstick, used to support a painter's hand, gather below it.

The two arms create different kinds of movement. The extended arm opens the composition towards the easel; the bent arm brings the palette back towards the body. Between them, a small interval of darkness separates the tools from the dress. It gives the objects clear silhouettes without making them seem detached from her hands.

Her face turns partly towards us. Dark hair rises above the forehead, with curls framing the face and longer locks falling over her shoulder. Her eyes do not meet the viewer's gaze, and they are not fixed on the brush's point. That divided attention contributes to the portrait's sense of a held pose. It does not tell us what Gonzalès felt about sitting for it.

The white costume is a cotton and muslin ensemble of bodice and skirt, rather than a silk gown. Sarah Herring's National Gallery catalogue describes its short sleeves, transparent muslin, ruffled neckline and fashionable flounce.^[3] The black sash draws a firm line around the waist, its bow extending into the darkness behind her.

Below that narrow division, the skirt spreads forward and to the left. Long pale strokes follow its falling folds, while shorter marks articulate the gathered fabric and hem. White shifts through cream, grey and cool blue. The dress becomes a large, varied surface, far more expansive than the exposed flesh of face and arms.

Its brightness brings the lower body close to the viewer, while the dark grey-blue wall leaves the upper figure sharply legible. Manet can describe the whole seated pose through a few strongly opposed areas: dark hair, pale face, white clothing and black sash.

Tools, Furniture and the Flower on the Floor

The setting offers several reminders of an artist's working space. Gonzalès sits on a brown chair made to resemble bamboo. A portfolio leans beside it, while the easel's heavy vertical supports rise at the opposite side. On the floor, a small upholstered footstool occupies the lower-left corner.

The patterned blue carpet keeps the foreground active beneath the broad white skirt. Green, yellow and warmer touches suggest its floral decoration. These broken marks differ from the more continuous modelling of the face and arms, making the floor a conspicuously painted part of the image.

A white peony lies near the hem, its stem extending across the carpet. Beside it, at the lower right, a rolled print carries Manet's signature and the date 1870.^[1] The signature belongs to the portrait's maker, placed within a represented object in the sitter's surroundings.

The peony creates a small counterpart to the flowers on the easel. One flower lies within Gonzalès's space; the others belong to a picture with its own frame and background. The contrast draws attention to the distinction between an object and its painted representation, a distinction that the portrait repeatedly invites us to consider.

The Finished Flower Picture

The image on the easel is unusually prominent. Pale flowers spread around a blue vase within an ornate gold frame. A blue scarf passes around the frame, securing it to the easel.^[3] Its rich border makes the flower piece appear complete and ready for display, despite the brush held against it.

Herring's catalogue explains that the composition derives from a print after Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer, the seventeenth-century flower painter. The immediate source identified by Marianne Koos is an engraving by Guillaume Régamey published in Charles Blanc's Histoire des peintres in 1862, itself reproducing a Monnoyer etching.^[3] The flowers therefore carry a history of copying between media into this apparently contemporary studio scene.

What stood physically on the easel remains uncertain. The catalogue considers several possibilities: a painted copy by Manet, a copy by Gonzalès, or a coloured etching presented in a frame. No securely identified painted copy by either artist settles the question.^[3] The portrait establishes the floral image's relationship to an older design more clearly than it establishes the maker of the represented object.

This matters when reading Gonzalès's action. She may seem to be adding a touch of blue to the vase, but we cannot treat the scene as a record of her producing an original flower painting. The finished frame, borrowed composition and position of her arm all belong to Manet's construction of an artist at work.

A Professional Pose and Its Conventions

The combination of elegant clothing and painting tools had a substantial history. Herring compares the portrait with self portraits by women artists, particularly Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun and Adélaïde Labille-Guiard.^[3] In such works, fine dress could proclaim success and professional standing, even if it would have been impractical clothing for ordinary studio labour.

Vigée Le Brun's 1790 self portrait offers a particularly close comparison in the extended painting arm and the presentation of the palette. Labille-Guiard's Self Portrait with Two Pupils, shown in 1785, gives its painter an imposing presence in a sumptuous blue dress.^[3] These earlier artists used the portrait itself to demonstrate the skill and status that their clothing announced.

Manet's picture draws on this tradition through its scale, costume and tools. Yet there is a difference between an artist making her own public image and Gonzalès being represented by her teacher. The finished flower piece also complicates the professional action that the portrait displays so prominently.

Those tensions have encouraged different interpretations. The picture can be read as an unusually ambitious recognition of a woman painter, while its decorative flowers and elaborate dress also raise questions about how her work is represented. Herring discusses both the portrait's professional assertion and criticism of its treatment of Gonzalès.^[3] Neither the costume nor the flower subject alone proves that Manet intended to diminish her abilities.

A Portrait Repeatedly Revised

The painting's broad handling can suggest directness, but its making was prolonged. Herring quotes letters written by Berthe Morisot to her sister Edma in August and September 1869. They report Manet repeatedly beginning Gonzalès's head again, including washing it out in the evening, and describe his remark about reaching a fortieth sitting.^[3]

These are reports from within Manet's circle, rather than a complete record of each sitting. They nevertheless make the difficulty of the undertaking clear. An appearance of freshness could require repeated removal and rebuilding, rather than an easy first attempt.

The portrait's surface and technical examination give another kind of evidence. The National Gallery's published X-ray and X-ray fluorescence investigations reveal changes to Gonzalès's hands, arms and palette, as well as to the chair and easel. The skirt was revised, a footstool introduced, and a pot of brushes painted out on the floor to the left.^[3]

Herring and the technical contributors also describe scraping around the face and traces of an earlier, rounder version. They suggest that a final thin, sketchy layer helped counter the heavier paint beneath.^[3] The face's restrained appearance can therefore coexist with considerable labour in its construction.

Colour beneath the Surface

The technical findings help explain some of the visible colour relationships. The dress was painted mainly with lead white. Samples from the grey-blue background contain mixtures including lead white, cobalt blue, ivory black and yellow ochre.^[3] Its subdued appearance comes from combinations of pigments, rather than from a single uniform grey.

The examination also distinguishes preliminary work from the final surface. Infrared reflectography did not reveal carbon-based drawing, while X-ray fluorescence scanning suggests that Manet sketched parts of the design with brownish paint containing earth pigments, cobalt blue and vermilion.^[3] The absence of visible carbon drawing does not mean the arrangement was left unplanned; the painted outlines themselves record its development.

Some colours have changed. The catalogue reports fading in the red lake pigment of the footstool, and suggests that other pink passages may once have been stronger.^[3] The present balance of white, blue and muted warm colour is therefore also affected by the materials' history. It cannot supply an exact reconstruction of how every passage looked in 1870.

The History of the Corners

The rectangular picture we see today was once presented with rounded corners. Herring discusses early photographs, including an 1884 exhibition view showing inserts within the frame. An 1895 photograph in Henri Guérard's home shows the corners exposed and painted.^[3] The change affected the border through which viewers encountered the scene.

The catalogue quotes an account by the critic Arsène Alexandre attributing the completion of the corners to Guérard. It treats this as a likely explanation, while allowing uncertainty about Manet's involvement.^[3] Differences in the corner paints do not resolve authorship by themselves, since Manet used the pigments identified there elsewhere in his work.

The rounded presentation and later exposed corners are distinct stages in the portrait's life.

At the Salon of 1870

Manet showed the portrait at the Salon of 1870 alongside Music Lesson. Gonzalès exhibited her own works there, but the reception of her paintings and that of Manet's portrait were different stories. Herring records substantial criticism of the portrait's handling and likeness.^[3]

Morisot's response also changed. The letters quoted in the catalogue show her initially praising the portrait highly, then finding the head weak when she saw it at the Salon.^[3] Her remarks register different encounters with the painting, rather than one settled judgement that can be represented by a single flattering quotation.

Théodore Duret offered a favourable public assessment. In his 1906 history of Manet, he reprinted a review identified as having appeared in L'Électeur libre on 9 June 1870. He defended the harmony between the subdued white dress, azure carpet and grey background, and praised the pose, movement and lively features.^[4]

Duret's defence makes the disagreement about colour especially specific. He saw a harmonious arrangement where opponents had found harshness. His later account is partisan, but the reprinted review shows that the painting's reception included a considered argument in its favour.

Gonzalès's Own Painting: The Full-length Mirror

Gonzalès's The Full-length Mirror, dated about 1869–70, offers a view of her own work from close to the period of Manet's portrait. It is a small oil painting, 39 × 26.5 cm, now in the National Gallery. The woman before the mirror is her sister Jeanne.^[5]

Jeanne stands with her back towards us, while the tall mirror returns her face and the front of her dress. Dark stripes on the sleeves and skirt contrast with a pale grey overdress. A black bow gathers the fabric behind her, and her hands hold a small red flower near the waist.

The room contains few objects: the mirror with its dark wooden columns and pediment, a red-brown sofa and a small framed picture on the wall. Grey and silvery tones bind figure and setting together. The red flower provides a slight, concentrated accent within this restrained colour scheme.

Comparing the two paintings shifts attention from Gonzalès as a represented artist to Gonzalès organising an image herself. Manet's portrait spreads the white costume across a large public canvas; her painting encloses a standing figure within a quiet room and doubles her appearance through reflection. Clothing, looking and the relation between figure and surrounding objects matter in both, but are arranged through different scales and viewpoints.

A Career beyond the Portrait

Gonzalès continued to paint and exhibit, working in both oil and pastel. Her Une loge aux Italiens, dated about 1874 by the Musée d'Orsay, places Jeanne and Henri Guérard in a theatre box. The museum describes its relationship to modern subjects and the strong contrasts of pale flesh and fabric against darkness associated with Manet.^[6]

Orsay's account suggests that an earlier version was refused at the Salon of 1874, before the revised painting was shown successfully in 1879.^[6] That history belongs to Gonzalès's own negotiations with exhibition and reception. Her career continued through choices of subject and treatment that extend well beyond the flower picture in Manet's portrait.

Manet gave the portrait to Gonzalès. It later passed through her family and entered Hugh Lane's collection in 1906.^[3] Its present credit records the Sir Hugh Lane Bequest of 1917 and the partnership between the National Gallery, London, and Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin.^[1]