Detail from Eva Gonzalès’s A Theatre Box at the Italiens, c1874
(Picture: Musée d’Orsay, Paris © Photo: RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski)One of the nice things about the Hugh Lane bequest – a group of paintings shared between the National Gallery and what is now known as the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin – is that it offers the chance to reassess the pictures with a fresh eye when they switch between the two venues.
One is Manet’s Eva Gonzalès, which is the focus of this latest show at the National in London. Right at the start we see a group portrait called Homage to Manet, featuring the patrician figure of Lane himself and other Irish notables by William Orpen. And what’s the enormous painting behind them? Manet’s portrait of Gonzalès, that’s what, which Lane purchased in 1906 for the Irish gallery of modern art he was planning.
From the copy within another work, we arrive at the painting itself: Manet’s portrait of his only pupil, painting at her easel, in a nice white frock. When he exhibited it at the Paris salon of 1870, it got a pasting from the critics, who took issue with the sitter’s “dazed, fixed expression”, her “stupefied eyes and nose like a parrot’s beak”.
You couldn’t get away with that nowadays. The critics had a point though. The nose is singular (Manet apparently tried 25 times to get it right), the expression fixed and abstracted and the pose peculiar. Gonzalès is sitting a little too far away from her canvas, even allowing for the rod supporting her wrist, a position inconvenient for painting but excellent for showing off her shapely white arm. As for her frock, it’s impractical but striking, as ghostly as her skin and is nicely echoed by the beautiful white peony on the floor, resting on a floral carpet.
The lady herself is painting a still life of flowers, which the gallery has identified as a copy of Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer’s Blue Vase. It’s a curious portrait, but wonderfully striking.
So, is this an occasion for feminists to get on their high horse and complain that – as we find asserted here – flowers, like copying itself, were back then a nice suitable subject for women, bless them?
Well, it’s difficult to see how to maintain that approach, given that Manet was famous for his flower pictures, and in the 17th century floral painting was very much a man’s game, though perhaps another way to think about it is that, though flowers were for everyone, grand (prestigious, and lucrative) history paintings were considered inappropriate for ladies.
And what about that impractical frock? The second part of this exhibition discusses the place of women in the art world of the time and the tradition of self-portraiture by women artists. And, put in context, it seems that depicting a woman artist in an expensive dress was a way to establish her standing.
Cue then for the series here of brilliant self-portraits by women artists, including a copy of the exquisite self-portrait by Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun, who may have been enchantingly pretty, but was also a member of the French and Roman Academies, thank you. There are other greats too: Angelica Kauffman, also in white, and Romney’s respectful portrait of Mary Moser, the other, less well-known female founder member of the Royal Academy.
The later depictions of female artists include some terrific pieces too: Gwen John’s feisty self-portrait and a lovely picture by Albert Stevens of an artist in a fetching, practical smock.
At the close, we get some of Gonzalès’s own paintings, including a striking depiction of a man and a woman in a theatre box, a work that bears comparison with any of the Impressionists. Amusingly, her pictures were applauded at the Salon by the critics, unlike Manet’s portrait.
