The Wildenstein Plattner Institute is pleased to announce the digital release of "The Eva Gonzalès Catalogue Raisonné Project," comprising all known works by Eva Gonzalès, one of the few women affiliated with the Impressionist movement alongside Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, and Marie Bracquemond. This dynamic resource is the first of its kind for a female artist on the WPI’s portal, integrating digitized historical material and new critical research. 

Eva Gonzalès (1847–1883) was the daughter of Emmanuel Gonzalès, novelist and a co-founder of the Société des gens de lettres, and the musician Marie Céline Ragut. She grew up among a cultural elite of artists, musicians, and writers, and studied under the fashionable portraitist Charles Chaplin before Édouard Manet took her on as his student in 1869. Her works were regularly exhibited at the Salons, including the Salon of 1883 with Une modiste — held five days before she would die from complications of childbirth at age thirty-four.

"The Eva Gonzalès Catalogue Raisonné Project" builds on the groundbreaking 1990 catalogue raisonné by Marie-Caroline Sainsaulieu and Jacques de Mons, who were faced with the challenge of cataloguing her works with sparse accounting from the usual sources: dealer records, stock books, and historicizing texts. “At the time, there existed but a small book published in 1950 by Claude-Roger Marx as told by [her son] Jean-Raimond.” (“A History of the Eva Gonzalès Catalogue Raisonné,” Sainsaulieu). 

Since the publication of the 1990 catalogue, renewed interest in the work of Eva Gonzalès and fellow female Impressionists heralded major exhibitions including "Women Impressionists" (2008, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt); "Women Artists in Paris, 1850–1900" (2017, Denver Art Museum, Speed Art Museum, and Clark Art Institute); and "Impressionism and Its Overlooked Women" (2024, Ordrupgaard and the National Gallery of Ireland). "The Eva Gonzalès Catalogue Raisonné Project," in turn, brings this foundational publication to a digital format with updated cataloguing, links to primary sources, and a thorough reassessment of her œuvre by Sophie Pietri, the Head of Archives at the Fonds WPI, and lead scholar Marie-Caroline Sainsaulieu.      

The digital format makes for a more thorough accounting of Gonzalès's art and how it was received by her contemporaries. The entry for "La Nichée" for example, which was exhibited at the Salon of 1874, includes links to Salon press coverage in "La Republique française," "Le Siècle," "Journal officiel de la République française," and others, praising her aptitude as a colorist and bemoaning the "influence" of Manet. Other entries include sales and exhibition catalogues, dissertations that considers select works in-depth — a wealth of material that underscores her significance within the larger art movements of Impressionism and Realism.

As with the "Claude Monet: The Revised Catalogue Raisonné; The Pastels" and the Tom Wesselmann Digital Corpus, "The Eva Gonzalès Catalogue Raisonné Project" uses the digital corpus methodology for full transparency on the progress of research. For an in-depth look at the digital infrastructure, visit Navigating.art for "The Eva Gonzalès Digital Catalogue Raisonné: Her work, relationships, and legacy." This is an ongoing project that will incorporate new research as it comes to light and more works are examined by the Eva Gonzalès Committee.

We invite you to share this with colleagues for whom this digital publication may be of interest! The catalogue is accessible on our website at wpi.art

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