Rating and value of works, paintings, drawings by Eva Gonzalès

If you own a work of art by or after Eva Gonzalès, and would like to know its value, our state-approved experts and auctioneers can offer you their expert appraisal services.

Our specialists will carry out a free appraisal of your work, and provide you with a precise estimate of its current market value.

Then, if you want to sell your work, we'll point you in the right direction to get the best possible price for it.

Rating and artist value Eva Gonzalès

Eva Gonzalès is an important 19th-century painter. She was part of the Impressionist movement. Today, the prices of her works are rising under the auctioneer's hammer.

His oils on canvas are particularly prized, especially by American buyers, and the price at which they sell on the art market ranges from €350 to €2,125,830, a considerable delta but one that speaks volumes about the value that can be attributed to Gonzalès' works.

In 2022, the pastel Au bord de la mer (Honfleur), dating from 1881, sold for €2,125,830. Its value is rising sharply.

Order of value from a simple work to the most prestigious

Style and technique of artist Eva Gonzalès  

Eva Gonzalès produces impressionist and realist oil paintings and drawings, and models for other painters. She was greatly influenced by Edgar Degas. She produces both genre scenes and portraits, as well as still lifes.

The life of Eva Gonzalès  

Eva Gonzalès (1847-1883) was a renowned French artist. She was born in Paris into a bourgeois Spanish family. Her father was a writer, and she rubbed shoulders with many artists from an early age. From 1866, she trained as a painter with Charles Chaplin and then Gustave Brion.

Alfred Stevens introduced her to Édouard Manet, who took her on as a pupil in his studio. She became good friends with Manet and posed for the Impressionists, making Berthe Morisot, a member of the same studio, jealous. Émile Zola praises her talent.

At Édouard Manet's instigation, she was admitted to the Salon of 1870, where she presented paintings strongly influenced by her master. The same year, Manet presented a portrait of her at the Salon.

She became engaged to Henri Guérard, a painter and engraver, whom she married three years later. She took him and other members of her family as models.

At the end of her career, she moved to Honfleur with her husband and a group of painters, including Paul Cézanne. It was there that she painted her pastel Au bord de la mer, which sold for over two million euros in 2022.

At the end of her career, she painted in dark tones during the Franco-Prussian war, and died in Paris of an embolism at the age of 36.

Une loge aux italiens by Eva Gonzales

Focus on Le Réveil, Eva Gonzales

Nineteenth-century Impressionist artist Eva Gonzalès' Le Réveil is a depiction of intimacy and gentleness. In this painting, she delicately captures a young woman lying half-awake, still enveloped in the calm of the night.

The soft, muted tones of white and beige create a serene, almost quilted atmosphere, in which light plays a central role. It diffuses softly over the sheets, cushions and the woman's skin, bringing a subtle warmth to the scene.

The young woman's face, barely lit, is marked by an expression of dreamy tranquillity. Her half-closed eyes and slight smile suggest a moment of quiet reflection, a suspended moment between sleep and awakening.

Gonzalès excels here in capturing not only form, but also the fleeting emotion of an intimate moment. The vase of flowers on the bedside table adds a touch of freshness, recalling the softness of the morning as it gently settles into the room.

In this work, Gonzalès demonstrates his talent for capturing the subtlety of human emotions, while mastering the play of light that characterizes Impressionism.

Every brushstroke, every nuance of color seems to exude elegance, turning this simple scene into a painting of great emotional depth.

Le Réveil testifies to Gonzalès' ability to make everyday moments extraordinary in their simplicity, revealing the beauty of life's most mundane moments.

This work fits naturally into the context of its artistic creation, since it depicts a woman in an interior, in light tones inspired by everyday life.

Impressionist women in the 20th century

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, women Impressionists were still struggling to make a name for themselves on the art scene. Indeed, women artists were the victims of considerable prejudice, which prevented them from gaining as much visibility as male artists.

A group of four artists, including Eva Gonzalès with Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt and Marie Bracquemond faced the difficulty of success, as they were not recognized by artistic institutions or by their peers.

In the 19th century, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts was completely closed to women. They were not accepted until 1897, forcing them to find other means of training, while many male artists who already had a certain legitimacy turned them away from their studios.

Critics, who have the power to either enhance or render their work invisible, don't really accept them either, reinforcing the difficulties they face in exhibiting and making their work known.

For much of the 19th century, the Salon, an institution that enabled artists to receive commissions and gain critical acclaim, also refused to open its doors to women artists.

Eva Gonzales and the others also faced prejudices about the practice of their profession: Impressionists were accustomed to painting in the streets or countryside, wearing pants - which was considered dishonorable for women painters, who were preferred to work indoors.

As a result, they were forced to fall back on pictorial genres deemed more suitable for women, such as portraiture - which is why we find many portraits of bourgeois women in their work.

These artists do, however, manage to create springboards for exhibiting their paintings, such as the first Impressionist exhibitions, which are less closed environments with fewer rules than the Salon.

Yet they were all close to their male colleagues, who shone for their talent: these included Edgar Degas, Auguste Renoir and Édouard Manet - Berthe Morisot being the latter's sister-in-law.

Eva Gonzalès' imprint on her period

Eva Gonzalès left her mark as a famous model and a renowned painter. She was one of the few women to exhibit at the Salon in her time. Despite the brevity of her career, she left behind a sizeable body of work.

Today, she is one of the most important examples of women artists, particularly Impressionists, who have come up against artistic institutions and social codes that are still unsuited to the success of women in the art world.

Although she died at the age of 36, she and her colleagues succeeded in making their voices heard and exhibiting their paintings. Today's art market proves that these artists have succeeded, beyond their expectations, in making their mark on the history of art, and in carving out a place for themselves in a milieu that was closed and hostile to them.

She eliminated transitional tones and detail from her paintings, and Manet's influence gradually disappeared from 1872 onwards (she died some ten years later). In the last years of her career, she developed her work mainly through pastels.

Recognizing the signature of Eva Gonzalès

The artist often signs his full name in small letters at the bottom of his paintings. Copies may exist, so expertise is important.

Knowing the value of a work

If you happen to own a work by or after Eva Gonzalès, don't hesitate to request a free appraisal using the form on our website. A member of our team of experts and certified auctioneers will contact you promptly to provide you with an estimate of the market value of your work, as well as ad hoc information about it. If you're thinking of selling your work, our specialists will also be on hand to offer you alternatives for selling it at the best possible price, taking into account market trends.