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

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

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

Then, if you wish to sell your work, we will direct you to the best possible arrangement to obtain the optimum price.

Rating and value of the artist Eva Gonzalès

Eva Gonzalès is an important artist of 19th century painting. She is part of the Impressionist movement. Now, prices for her works are rising under auctioneers' gavels.

Her oils on canvas are particularly prized, especially by American buyers, and the price at which they sell on the art market ranges between €350 and €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 price has risen 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 on canvas and drawings, she also models for other painters. She is greatly influenced by Edgar Degas. She produced 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 is good friends with Manet and poses for the Impressionists, making Berthe Morisot, a member of the same studio, jealous. Émile Zola praised her talent.

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

She became engaged to Henri Guérard, whom she married three years later; he was also a painter and engraver. She modelled a great deal on him and other members of her family.

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, aged 36.

Une loge aux italiens by Eva Gonzales

Focus on Le Réveil, Eva Gonzales

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

The soft, muted tones of white and beige create a serene, almost wadded-up 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 tranquility. Her half-closed eyes and slight smile suggest a moment of quiet reflection, a suspended moment between sleep and waking.

Gonzalès excels here in capturing not only the 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 morning as it gently settles into the room.

Through 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 breathe elegance, making this simple scene a painting of great emotional depth.

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

This work fits quite naturally into its context of artistic creation, as it depicts a woman in an interior, in light tones, drawing inspiration from everyday life.

Women Impressionists in the 20th century

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

A group made up of four artists, including Eva Gonzalès with Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt and Marie Bracquemond faced the difficulty of success, not being recognized by art institutions and their peers.

In the 19th century, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts was completely closed to women. They were only accepted from 1897 onwards, forcing them to find other means of training, while many male artists who already had a certain legitimacy turned them away from their studios.

The critics, having the power to highlight or invisibilize their production, didn't really accept them either, helping to reinforce the difficulties put in their way to exhibit and make their work known.

The Salon, an institution at the time enabling artists to receive commissions and be noticed by critics, also refused for much of the 19th century 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 deemed dishonorable for women painters, who were preferred to be seen working indoors.

They were therefore 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 did, however, manage to create springboards for exhibiting their paintings, such as the first Impressionist exhibitions, which were less closed environments with fewer rules than the Salon.

However, they are all close to their male colleagues, who shine for their talent  these include Edgar Degas, Auguste Renoir, and Édouard Manet - Berthe Morisot being the latter's sister-in-law.

Eva Gonzalès's imprint on her period

Eva Gonzalès marked her time as a famous model and as 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 leaves behind quite a large output.

Today, she is one of the important examples of women artists and particularly Impressionists who came up against art institutions and social codes still unsuited to women's success in the art world.

Although she died aged 36, she and her colleagues managed to make their voices heard and to exhibit their paintings. The art market today proves by the high valuation of these artists that they succeeded, beyond their expectations, in making their mark on art history 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 her full name in small letters at the bottom of her paintings. Copies may exist, which is why expertise remains important.

Knowing the value of a work

If you happen to own a work by Eva Gonzalès or after the artist, don't hesitate to request a free valuation using our 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 any relevant information about it. If you are considering selling your work, you will also be accompanied by our specialists in order to benefit from alternatives for selling it at the best possible price, taking into account the inclinations of the market.