A recent exhibition of works by late-nineteenth-century painters Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, and Eva Gonzales offered a rich visual counterpart to studies focusing new attention on the social and ideological forces that influenced their work. The paintings by Gonzales were particularly illuminating. Long marginalized by scholars as little more than an apprentice of Edouard Manet, Gonzales is revealed by the exhibition as possessing remarkable, if uneven, talents. Given the exhibition's focus, and especially the provocative new emphasis on Gonzales, the accompanying catalog proved disappointing. There often-quoted essays by critics contemporary to the artists – essays in themselves noteworthy but historical artifacts nonetheless – provided the exhibition with its only critical readings. Thus, a significant opportunity for scholarly debate was not only lost but even seemed pointedly avoided.