2023 Eva Gonzales 1849-1993 - Set

A name often cited alongside that of Berthe Morisot (but the reverse is not true), nine of her paintings in the collections of major museums, in Europe and the United States: this is what the history of the art has retained from the brief life of Eva Gonzalès. Born in 1849, died in 1883, at the age of thirty-four, she was a painter in a century when women had very little chance of becoming one. The School of Fine Arts was forbidden to them, to paint men and to work outside too. She first learned drawing from Charles Chaplin, was bored and left, supported by her father, a scholar and friend of Zola, to enter Édouard Manet's studio in 1869. Struck by the ardor of the newcomer, he paints a portrait of her. He starts over thirty times, it is so difficult for him to grasp the expression of such a young girl devoted to her painting. Upon her arrival in this place, Eva meets Berthe Morisot, eight years her senior. Both come from a high intellectual bourgeoisie. They freed themselves early from the academicism of their first masters with the constant support of the affection of their family, linked to figures of the artistic avant-garde. Everything brings them closer. Only time at work separates them, twenty more years of painting for Berthe Morisot.