Eva, Elisabeth, Angelica, Laura and Gwen

It turns out that the free exhibition at the National Gallery in London offering you the chance to Discover Manet & Eva Gonzalès provides you with the opportunity to discover a whole lot more besides; there are portraits and self-portraits going back to the late 18th century in a display that puts women artists and the challenges they faced at the forefront.

Eva Gonzalès was Edouard Manet's only formal pupil, and his fairly monumental portrait of her, nearly 2 metres high, is a rather strange picture at first sight. She's working on an already framed painting; she seems to be sitting, awkwardly posed, rather too far away from the canvas, the floor is carpeted, and she's wearing a most unsuitable snowy white dress; you wouldn't want to get any paint on her clothes or the carpet.

It wasn't an easy painting for Manet to get right; there were apparently numerous sittings and a lot of reworking. You might assume that the elegantly clad young woman dabbing at a picture of flowers in her best dress would be a mere dilettante, but that's not the message Manet intended to those who knew their art, as we discover a bit later on.

Gonzalès was a serious painter; in fact, one of the most prominent of women Impressionists, but she's not really known in this country, where there's just one work in a public collection, The Donkey Ride, which can be seen in this exhibition. Having become Manet's pupil before she was 20, Gonzalès remained friends with him and they continued an artistic dialogue for the rest of her short life. She died in childbirth at the age of 34 in 1873, just days after Manet's own death.

The most impressive of the handful of Gonzalès pictures on show here is A Theatre Box at the Italiens from the Musée d’Orsay.

You're immediately reminded of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's La Loge, painted at much the same time. If anything, Gonzalès's female protagonist looks out at you even more provocatively and assertively than Renoir's heroine, grasping her opera glasses firmly in her hand and wearing a daringly low-cut dress. It was, of course, rejected at the official Salon as being too radical.

So where did Manet get his idea for painting Eva Gonzalès in a flowing white gown? Well, as this exhibition shows, you need look no further than that hugely lauded and highly successful pan-European artist of the 18th century, Angelica Kauffman(n). She's one of a clutch of painters whose work is used to illustrate the broader context of women at the easel. Her depiction of herself in neoclassical dress with drawing materials is displayed near the Manet. 

Kauffman was one of the two women founder members of Britain's Royal Academy and a cultural phenomenon, as we saw in an exhibition in Dusseldorf in early 2020 that never made it to the RA as planned (you know why). Quite a woman to be compared with. 

If you were an in-demand 18th-century painter, you dressed for your self-portrait to suit your status. Check out the ruff, the headdress and the lacy cuffs worn by Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, in a pose not too dissimilar from the one Manet used (though she seems rather more comfortable at the easel).

And that red sash against the black dress has an echo in the black sash worn by Gonzalès in Manet's painting. These pictures of Le Brun and Kauffman, by the way, are not random choices; versions of both were painted for the collection of self-portraits of artists in the Uffizi in Florence, where they were among the few women represented.

The curators of this show present a number of paintings to illustrate that even the most talented women artists faced huge hurdles. Access to proper training was limited. Drawing from life was regarded as inappropriate, even morally damaging, for women. Rolinda Sharples depicted herself all in white at her easel in 1816 in The Artist and Her Mother. It was her mother, Ellen, who's looking on in the painting, who trained her and who went on to establish the Bristol Academy, offering life classes for women, in 1844, a surprisingly early date.

Because even at the start of the 20th century, a woman painting a nude was considered shocking. Laura Knight -- the first woman artist to achieve RA membership since Kauffman and her contemporary Mary Moser -- was a challenger of such conventions.  

Not only did Knight depict herself painting a nude model, she also showed herself in proper working gear, with a red smock. This is perhaps Knight's most famous picture, but we can't actually recall seeing it in the flesh (no pun intended) before. You can imagine the harrumphing from the art establishment when it was painted in 1913. 

No easel, no palette, no brushes in this self-portrait by Gwen John, made about the turn of the century, though the black cloth draped over her arm may be her artist's smock. 

She looks out at you, proudly, almost fiercely, daring you to deny her right to be on canvas. In illustrious company, too, because John's picture draws on a long line of male self-portraiture, particularly Rembrandt's depiction of himself at the age of 34, which is also in the National Gallery, and which she would have seen as a student. 

Before we go, it's time to get back to Manet and Eva Gonzalès. The art dealer and collector Hugh Lane bought the painting in 1906 as a star attraction for his planned gallery of modern art in Dublin. He hung it in the meantime in his house in London, which was also used as a studio by the fashionable portrait painter William Orpen.

Orpen shows us a gathering of some of the biggest names of the contemporary British and Irish art scene in front of Manet's portrait in Lane's house. They're all men, of course, including Walter Sickert standing in the light grey suit on the far right.

This is, then, Orpen's Homage to Manet, rather than Orpen's homage to Gonzalès, who was by this time seen as a muse rather than an artist in her own right.

Rediscovering, repromoting, repositioning women artists is very much a theme of the moment; add to your knowledge and appreciation with this fine free show at the National Gallery. 

Practicalities

Discover Manet & Eva Gonzalès continues at the National Gallery in London until January 15. It's open daily from 1000 to 1800, with lates on Fridays to 2100; the gallery is closed December 24-26 and January 1. Admission to this show is free of charge; allow 30 minutes or so. The National Gallery is on the north side of Trafalgar Square, just a couple of minutes from Charing Cross or Leicester Square stations on the rail and Underground networks.

Images

Edouard Manet (1832-1883), Eva Gonzalès, 1870, The National Gallery, London in partnership with Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin. © Photo: The National Gallery, London
Eva Gonzalès (1849-1883), A Theatre Box at the Italiens, about 1874, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. © Photo: RMN-Grand Palais (musée d'Orsay)/Hervé Lewandowski
Angelica Kauffmann (1741-1807), Self-Portrait, 1787, Cobbe Collection, Hatchlands Park, Surrey. © Cobbe Collection; Photo: Alexey Moskvin
Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842), Self-Portrait, 1791, National Trust Collections, Ickworth House, Suffolk. © National Trust Images
Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970), Laura Knight with Model, Ella Louise Naper (‘Self-Portrait’), 1913, National Portrait Gallery, London. © Estate of Dame Laura Knight. All rights reserved 2022/Bridgeman Images

Gwen John (1876-1939), Self-Portrait, about 1900, National Portrait Gallery, London. © National Portrait Gallery, London
Sir William Orpen (1878-1931), Homage to Manet, 1909, Manchester Art Gallery. © Manchester Art Gallery/Bridgeman Images