Eva Gonzalès

Larry Ostrom, Ontario, Canada
Galerie Daber SA, Paris (and sold: Sotheby's, London, December 7, 1978, lot 512)
Josefowitz Collection, Switzerland (acquired at the above sale and sold: Christie's, New York, May 7, 2002, lot 11)
Acquired at the above sale

Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1979 (on loan)
Aichi, Prefectural Museum of Art; Tokyo, Takashimaya Art Gallery; Osaka, Takashimaya Art Gallery; Utsunomiya, Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts & Kumamoto, Prefectural Museum of Art, Six femmes-peintres, 1983, no. 34, illustrated in the catalogue

Marie-Caroline Sainsaulieu & Jacques de Mons, Eva Gonzalès, 1849-1883, Étude critique et catalogue raisonné, Paris, 1990, no. 113, illustrated in color p. 245

The work is in very good condition. Canvas has been lined. The surface is richly textured and the colors are bright. There is some hairline craquelure, most notably in the dark green pigments and in the lower left quadrant. There is a pindot indentation below the handle of the spoon. Under Uv light, there is a minor area of inpainting to the tablecloth near the bottom of the vase. There are some minor scattered strokes in the background in the upper register and a few strokes in the lower right corner.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Eva Gonzalès was born in Paris in 1849, where at the age of sixteen, she began taking art courses at Charles Chapin’s studio. Gonzalès met Édouard Manet in this studio in 1869, and he quickly became Gonzalès' teacher and mentor. As his sole pupil, Gonzalès achieved considerable success within Parisian art circles during her lifetime. While much of her work drew inspiration from the style and techniques learned under Manet’s tutelage, Gonzalès was confined in her choice of subject matter due to her gender and its societal repercussions. Nonetheless, her beautiful bouquets, portraits of her closest family members and self portraits achieved a warm elegance previously unknown in the Impressionist mode, cementing her as a pivotal, if under-appreciated figure in the movement. Her lamentable popular obscurity is attributable in no small part to her untimely death. Gonzalès died during childbirth in 1883, just a few days after the death of Manet. Unwilling to exhibit with the Impressionists, she stayed the course in the salons with her maître and achieved significant critical acclaim despite her lack of popularity in the eyes of the public. The continued rediscovery of Gonzalès's skillful hand places her in the pantheon of female Impressionists alongside Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, while the quality of her work links her to many more masters of the era.

Manet was undeniably the single greatest influence on Gonzalès' artistic style. The present work, with its gloriously staccato-like brushwork and closely cropped composition, is not without affinity to his celebrated late still lifes which were painted concurrently (see fig. 1). Gonzalès was championed by the likes of Émile Zola, who referred to her as the "naturalist artist of our times" (quoted in “Lettres Parisiennes” in La Cloche, May 12, 1872, p. 2, translated from the French), and the critic Jules Clarétie, who wrote of Gonzalès as "an artist of rare talent, who takes the brush after having handled pastel like Rosalba" (Jules Clarétie, Peintres et Sculpteurs Contemporains, Paris, 1874, p. 263, translated from the French).