GONZALÈS, Eva
(b. 1849, Paris, d. 1883, Paris)

Biography

French painter. 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 in 1869. Manet is said to have begun a portrait of her at once which was completed in 1870 and exhibited at The Salon in that year. Like her teacher, Édouard Manet, she never exhibited with the Impressionist painters in their controversial exhibitions in Paris, 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.

She married Henri Guérard, brother of the graphic artist Henri Guérard, and used him and her sister Jeanne Gonzalès as the subjects for many of her paintings. Her career was cut short when she died in childbirth at the age of thirty-four, six days after the death of her teacher, Manet.