Summary:
- The Petit Palais in Paris hosts the first major monograph on Eva Gonzalès, open until 24 January 2027.
- The show gathers nearly 100 paintings, pastels and engravings and explains the barriers women faced as artists in the 19th century.
- The exhibition moves to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in February 2027.
The Petit Palais in Paris opened Eva Gonzalès. Parcours d’une artiste libre on 15 September 2026. The exhibition runs until 24 January 2027 and gathers nearly 100 paintings, pastels and engravings. The museum presents the show as the first major monograph on the painter. In February 2027 the exhibition moves to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
Born in Paris in 1847, Gonzalès died in 1883 at 36. The École des Beaux-Arts did not admit women in her lifetime. The school opened to them in 1897. Painting counted as an acceptable pastime for a young bourgeois woman, but a career required training, models, studios and public recognition. Her family supported her choice and had the means to fund private lessons. She studied with Charles Chaplin, then with Édouard Manet, who took her as his only official pupil.
In 1971 the art historian Linda Nochlin asked in an essay why no great women artists existed. She located the answer in conditions, not talent: access to training, study of the human body, a studio, freedom of movement, professional contacts and recognition. Gonzalès’s career shows those conditions at work.
Around 1874 Gonzalès painted Une loge aux Italiens. The canvas shows her sister Jeanne in a theatre box beside Henri Guérard, whom Gonzalès married in 1879. Jeanne wears a light, low-cut dress and appears as a woman of contemporary Paris, not as an allegory. The Salon jury rejected the painting in 1874. The same year the Salon showed her pastel La Matinée rose, closer to the delicacy audiences expected from a woman painter. Gonzalès reworked Une loge aux Italiens, and the Salon accepted it in 1879.
Jeanne appears in several works in the exhibition. Men trained in academies, studied the nude and found professional models more easily. Women had fewer options, so sisters, friends and relatives posed. In Une loge aux Italiens Jeanne watches from the audience while Gonzalès decides how to paint her. The canvas links a female spectator with a female author.
If you plan a visit, the museum stands on Avenue Winston-Churchill in the 8th arrondissement and closes on Mondays.
Andrea Darren
Born in Manchester, from a young age, she was passionate about art and design. She studied at the University of the Arts in London, where she developed her skills in these fields. Today, Andrea works as an editor for a renowned publishing house, combining her love for art and design with her editorial expertise.
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