Discover Manet and Eva Gonzalès

Comprehensive online lecture from ARTscapades previewing the current exhibition at the National Gallery based around Manet’s portrait of the artist Eva Gonzales.

Richard Stemp described the portrait from 1870 putting it in the context of both their lives and pointing out some of the oddities in the work such as the fact she is painting a work that is already frame and she wears an impractical white dress. Most fascinating was the fact that the still-life she is working on is a copy of a print of a 18th century print which appears in a contemporary book on the history of French painting which is in the show.

He then went on to explain some of the oddities in the context of other portraits and self-portraits of women artists explaining how many were painting the Allegory Le Pittura which was a female figure. He went through the pictures in the show which demonstrated this. He also used them to talk about what women wore to paint and how that contrasted with how they showed themselves.

Finally he went through the pictures by Gonzalès in the show which were beautiful and explained the addendum to the show, a picture by William Orpen which includes the featured portrait.

This was a great introduction to the show which I have been to since.

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