The exhibition presented at the Petit Palais, then at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in February 2027, is the first major monograph devoted to the artist Eva Gonzalès (1847-1883).
Unlike other women artists of her time, such as Mary Cassatt or Berthe Morisot, Eva Gonzalès has never been honoured with a retrospective. Regularly presented within the group of Impressionist women, without ever having truly been part of it, Eva Gonzalès has a distinctive touch. This painter was the sole pupil of Édouard Manet, with whom she maintained an exceptional artistic relationship. Supported by her loved ones, she managed to make her way in a nineteenth century not favourable to the success of women on the art scene.
The ambition of this exhibition is to introduce the public to an artist too often perceived as a secondary figure in the history of art, in resonance with the three personalities who helped strengthen her talent and keep her work alive: Jeanne Gonzalès, her sister, Henri Guérard, her husband, and above all Édouard Manet, the master she chose for herself and who shared with her the conceptions of an innovative painting. To exhibit Eva Gonzalès today, a recognised but discreet painter, is to trace the brief existence of an artist surrounded by the kindness of her family, giving a large place to the intimate sphere and to the light and determined manner in which she developed her work.
The exhibition also offers selected counterpoints through works by other painters of this period – Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Marie Bracquemond. These crossed perspectives make it possible to better understand the trajectories of these women, the conditions of creation that were theirs, the subjects they took up, as well as the context in which their works were received.
This exhibition is organised with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and with the exceptional support of the Musée d'Orsay