Detail from Eva Gonzalès’s A Theatre Box at the Italiens, c1874
(Picture: Musée d’Orsay, Paris © Photo: RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski)One of the nice things about the Hugh Lane bequest – a group of paintings shared between the National Gallery and what is now known as the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin – is that it offers the chance to reassess the pictures with a fresh eye when they switch between the two venues.
One is Manet’s Eva Gonzalès, which is the focus of this latest show at the National in London. Right at the start we see a group portrait called Homage to Manet, featuring the patrician figure of Lane himself and other Irish notables by William Orpen. And what’s the enormous painting behind them? Manet’s portrait of Gonzalès, that’s what, which Lane purchased in 1906 for the Irish gallery of modern art he was planning.
