Eva Gonzalès, parcours d’une artiste libre

At the Petit Palais, a retrospective traces Eva Gonzalès's career through nearly one hundred paintings, pastels, and engravings. From theatre boxes to family scenes and the Normandy landscapes, she follows a painter who finds her subjects in the places and faces she knows.

As Édouard Manet's sole pupil, Gonzalès shares with him a taste for scenes of modern life. In "Une loge aux Italiens," loaned by the Musée d’Orsay, she makes the theatre a place where people come also to be seen. Like Manet, she exhibits her works at the Salon. The trajectory of her career brings her closer to her contemporaries Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, while reminding us that she did not exhibit with the Impressionist group.

In "Le Réveil," the gaze shifts from public life toward intimacy. The portraits of her sister Jeanne and the Normandy scenes extend this attention to loved ones and to ordinary gestures. Organized with the Van Gogh Museum, the exhibition follows this evolution in the chronology of her career, up to the works from the final years.

Practical information
• Closed on Mondays, as well as December 25 and January 1.
• Evening hours on Fridays and Saturdays until 8 p.m.