Bullfight

1865/66

Édouard Manet (French, 1832–1883)

In the fall of 1865, Édouard Manet traveled to Spain for about ten days. This brief trip had a profound impact on his art of this period. In a letter to poet Charles Baudelaire, he described a bullfight he attended in Madrid as “one of the finest, most curious, and most terrifying sights to be seen.” The quick sketches he made as he watched the fights informed several later canvases, including this one. Here, he underscored the tension of the moment—the crowd in the background blends together in a blur while the bullfighter and bull stand off in sharper focus.

Status: On View, Gallery 225
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Édouard Manet
Title: Bullfight
Place: France (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1865–1866
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 48 × 60.4 cm (18 7/8 × 23 3/4 in.); Framed: 72.4 × 84.5 × 9.3 cm (28 1/2 × 33 1/4 × 3 5/8 in.)
Credit Line: Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection
Reference Number: 1937.1019
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/25812/manifest.json

Rouart and Wildenstein 108

Cat. 9 Bullfight, 1865/66

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.