Eva Gonzalès is an Impressionist only by name, not really in spirit.

Against the various odds stacked against her, Gonzalès belonged to the elusive class of painters who also happened to be women. Like the story of Artemisia Gentileschi and the female painters who vied to be artists between them, Gonzalès could not attend art school because of her gender. Instead, her family’s wealth allowed her to take private lessons. It also helped that she came from an artistic family that supported her endeavors, as was also the case with so many other female artists. Her father wrote novels, and her mother played music.

Gonzalès also enjoyed a series of somewhat lucky breaks. First, she studied with French artist Charles Chaplin, who also taught Berthe Morisot. After studying with Chaplin for five years, she had the good fortune to meet Édouard Manet, who was instantly smitten with this beautiful and precocious young woman. Gonzalès began to model for him, which helped her to gain entrée into the exclusive world of the Parisian avant-garde. Gonzalès wasn’t just a casual model, either. She and Manet worked and trained together, shaping each other’s work. One of Manet’s portraits featuring Gonzalès is in the collection at the National Gallery London. Her life became even further entangled with his when she married his engraver, Henri Guerard.

Manet’s style and manner greatly influenced the young artist. Just like her mentor, Gonzalès never showed her work at the infamously rebellious Impressionist exhibitions that the group hosted in spite of tradition. Instead, she followed the lead of artists like Gérôme and Bouguereau and exhibited at the official Academy Salons. As she developed her own style, she delved further into working with pastels, eventually reaching a proficiency that put her on par with Rosalba Carriera.  

Unfortunately, her short-lived career was just taking off when she exhibited at the Salon in 1874. She suffered complications due to childbirth after delivering her first and only child. In a feat of fearful symmetry, Manet and Gonzalès died just six days apart from one another. Manet made it to fifty-one years of age compared to Gonzalès’s thirty-four. After she died, her sister Jeanne married her widowed brother-in-law and helped him raise his children.