Encouraged by her parents from an early age to paint, Eva Gonzalès trained with Charles Chaplin and Édouard Manet. She first exhibited outside the Salon, but succeeded in exhibiting at that official venue for the first time in 1879. Like Manet, she declined invitations to participate in the Impressionist exhibitions, but nonetheless her name remains linked to that group. Although her career was cut short by her early death at age thirty-four, she produced a significant body of work, consisting primarily of portraiture and interior scenes.

A fully illustrated catalogue, Women Artists in Paris, 1850–1900, has been published by the American Federation of Arts and Yale University Press. Along with an art-historical overview by curator Laurence Madeline, the catalogue includes essays by Jane R. Becker, collections management associate, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Richard Kendall, former curator at large, Clark Art Institute; Bridget Alsdorf, associate professor, History of Art, Princeton University; and Vibeke Hansen, curator, Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo.