Eva Gonzalès

She was the only formal pupil Édouard Manet ever took. Eva Gonzalès began working with him in 1869, in her early twenties, the daughter of a well-known Paris novelist, and Manet painted her at her easel in a large portrait that now hangs in the National Gallery in London. For a long time that portrait was how most people knew her, as Manet's model rather than a painter in her own right.

Her own pictures argue otherwise. The best known, A Loge at the Théâtre des Italiens, shows a woman and her companion in a theatre box, done around 1874 in the light, modern manner of her circle, and it was accepted at the official Salon. She kept some distance from the Impressionists' independent shows and exhibited at the Salon instead, working in pastel and in oil on scenes of contemporary Paris life.

Her story ends abruptly. In the spring of 1883 Manet died. A few days later Gonzalès, who had just given birth to a son, died of an embolism, still in her thirties. Much of her work stayed with her family and was gathered and shown together only much later.