Eva Gonzalès's The Convalescent (Portrait of a Woman in White) 'is a combination of charcoal and oil on canvas, made in 1877–8. It is so delicate as to be almost invisible, the white gown as transparent as the woman’s apparent health. It is one of a number of explorations of white on white Gonzalès experimented with. Made two years before her marriage to the printmake Henri Guèrard, it also reminds us of Gonzalès’s tragically short life: she died in 1883 from a blood clot following the birth of her daughter, three days after her teacher Manet’s own death.'