
Bullfight
<p>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.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1865
- 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.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Édouard Manet
Artist

Painting
Édouard Manet was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
Full artist profile →More
More by Édouard Manet
Jeanne (Spring)
1902 · Etching and foul-biting in black on ivory laid paper
Head of a Woman and Head of a Bearded Man
1880 · Watercolor with pen and brown ink and graphite on cream wove paper
Woman Reading
1880 · Oil on canvas
Madame Manet (Suzanne Leenhoff, 1829–1906) at Bellevue
1880 · Oil on canvas
Woman Reading
1880 · Oil on canvas
The Smoker II
1879 · Drypoint in brown on ivory wove paper
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Édouard Manet
- Year
- 1865
- 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.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1865-013933
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified




