The Bullfight

The Bullfight is an 1864–1865 oil on canvas painting by Édouard Manet, now in the Frick Collection in New York. Its dimensions are 48×60.4 cm. Like The Dead Man, it was originally part of a larger composition entitled Episode in a Bullfight. The scene was inspired by a trip that Manet took to Spain for ten days in the fall of 1865. He described the bullfight he witnessed in a letter to Charles Baudelaire as "one of the finest, most curious and most terrifying sights to be seen."

The cutting

After having recut Épisode, Manet then reworked L'Homme mort, and cut La Corrida in such a way as to keep three bullfighters at the barrier: the first title chosen for this work was Toreros en action. But he had to cut almost the entire bull if he wanted to keep the men on foot. The artist decided instead to cut off the feet of the bullfighter on the left and trim the crowd in the stands.