Spaightwood Galleries
120 Main Street, Upton MA 01568-6193; 800-809-3343
Eva Gonzalès (French, 1849-1883)
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Eva Gonzalès, daughter of a Spanish (naturalized French) writer and a Belgian musician, grew up in a house that was a meeting place for critics and writers including Theodore de Banville and Phillippe Jourde, director of the newspaper Siècle. After lessons with Charles Chaplin, a society portraitist who ran a studio for women and also taught Mary Cassatt, she became Manet's only formal pupil in 1869, receiving advice and instruction from him. She also modelled for him, and his Portrait of Eva Gonzalès, shown at the Salon in 1870 and presently in the National Gallery in London, presents her in front of an easel, working on a painting. Rejecting invitations to show with the Impressionists, she preferred instead to show at the Salons, exhibiting there in 1870 and 1879, where many critics preferred her more genteel pieces, but her work was also defended by many more "realist" critics (i.e., those supportive of the Impressionists) including Zacharie Astruc (the subject of an etched portrait by Whistler), Philippe Burty, and Emile Zola. Gonzalès mature work, both oil paintings and finished drawings, concentrated on subjects from life, including portraits and still-lifes. Her work was exhibited at the offices of the art review L'Art in 1882 and in 1883 at the Galerie Georges Petit. In 1885, after her death in childbirth in 1883, a retrospective of 88 works was held at the Salons de La Vie Moderne. The Grove Dictionary of Art, from which this note was largely drawn, notes that "Although her work was acclaimed by several critics, the exhibition did not draw crowds, and few works were sold at the auction held soon afterwards at the Hôtel Drouet in Paris." Now that the paintings, drawings, and prints of the Impressionists have come to define late 19th-century art for both critics and the public alike, her work is held in much more regard. With attention now paid to women artists no longer required to be genteel, her work is highly desired. Most of her paintings are in public collections, and those that are not reach very respectable prices at auction. It is rare for her drawings to come on the market. Of drawings sold at auction since 1988, prices made were $20,224 for a small (roughtly 8x7 inches) still life in Paris in 1999, $14,730 for a very small (roughly 4x8 inches) watercolor of onions at Christie's Amsterdam in 1993, and someone acquired a small (roughly 9x7 inches) watercolor of flowers from at Christie's East in NY in 1995 for a bargain $2000. A 1993 exhibition at the Musée Marmottan suggested Eva Gonzalès's work can be ranked with her two better known contempopraries, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, and recent publications and exhibitions have argued and shown that her work stands with that of Morisot and Cassatt. Perhaps in recognition of this new critical evaluation, when one of her watercolors, a portrait of her sister, “La femme en rose, Jeanne Gonzales (1879)” (463x385 mm or 18-3/8x15-1/2 inches), came up for auction recently, it sold at Christie's Paris on 22 March 2007 for $585,000 (the presale estimate was (EUR 100,000-150,000 or about $140,000-$210,000). It was signed only with an estate stamp (Cachet Studio Haut Gauche); ours is initialed in black chalk upper right recto and signed or inscribed "Eva Gonzalès" verso in pen. Ours is smaller (296x220mm or 11-3/4x8-3/4 inches), but much more dramatic, perhaps reflecting more closely her studies with Manet; the portrait of her sister is much prettier in a more conventionally Impressionistic way.
Select bibliography: Philippe Burty, Eva Gonzales (Paris: Salons de La Vie Moderne, 1885); Galerie Marcel Bernheim, Retrospective Eva Gonzales (Paris: Galerie Marcel Bernheim, 1932); Tamar Garb, Women Impressionists (NY: Rizzoli, 1986); Edward Lucie-Smith, Impressionist Women (London: George Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989); Musée Marmottan, Les Femmes Impressionnistes: Mary Cassatt, Eva Gonzales, Berthe Morisot (Paris: Bibliotheque des Arts, 1993); Claude Roger-Marx, Eva Gonzalès (Saint-Germain-en-Laye: Les Editions de Neuilly, 1950); Claude Roger-Marx, Eva Gonzalès (Paris: Galerie Daber, 1959); Marie-Caroline Sainsaulieu and Jacques de Mons, Eva Gonzales. 1849-1883. Etude critique et catalogue raisonne (Paris: Bibliothèque des Arts, 1991).
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Spaightwood Galleries, Inc.
To purchase, call us at 1-800-809-3343 (508-529-2511 in Upton MA & vicinity) or send an email to sptwd@verizon.net. We accept AmericanExpress, DiscoverCard, MasterCard, and Visa.
Spaightwood Galleries is located at 120 Main St (aka Highway 140) in Upton MA at the corner of Main St and Maple Ave in a rehabilitated Unitarian Church. For directions and visiting information, please call. We are, of course, always available over the web and by telephone (see above for contact information). Click the following for links to past shows and artists. For a visual tour of the gallery, please click here. For information about Andy Weiner and Sonja Hansard-Weiner, please click here. For a list of special offers currently available, see Specials.
Visiting hours: Saturday and Sunday noon to six and other times by arrangement. Please call to confirm your visit. Browsers and guests are welcome.
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