The Irish Afterlife of Eva Gonzales

Interesting online lecture from the National Gallery discussing the afterlife of Manet’s portrait of Eva Gonzales and its Irish connections.

The talk complimented the exhibition which examined the painting that was at the gallery at the time. Hannah Baker, an artist and phd student at Trinity College, Dublin, talked us through how Hugh Lane, who was collecting art for a gallery of modern art in Dublin discovered the picture and borrowed it for various exhibitions eventually buying it in 1906.

She discussed the mixed success of his gallery in Dublin and how the picture then ended up in the National Gallery following Lane’s death on the Lusitania in 1915. He had left it to the gallery along with 38 other pictures in his will but an unwitnessed reverted this to the Dublin gallery. For many years this was not recognised but the paintings are how viewed as jointly owned by the National Gallery and the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin.

She also looked in detail at William Orpen’s “Homage to Manet” which features the Eva Gonzales portrait with a group of the great and good of the art world of the time including Orpen himself, Hugh Lane and Walter. This picture had also featured in the National Gallery exhibition.

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