After the Bullfight

Mary Cassatt · 1873

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

82.5 × 64 cm (32 1/8 × 25 3/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Impressionism

Painted during Mary Cassatt's formative trip to Spain, *After the Bullfight* is a bold, assured work that stands apart from the domestic scenes she would later become famous for. In 1872–73, Cassatt immersed herself in studying the Spanish masters — particularly Velázquez — and the influence is unmistakable here: the confident brushwork, the strong tonal contrasts, and the way the matador figure commands the canvas with quiet authority. This was a deliberate act of artistic self-education, and the painting has an energy that reflects an artist pushing her own limits. It predates her move to Paris and her pivotal friendship with Degas, offering a glimpse of Cassatt before Impressionism reshaped her vision entirely. The Art Institute of Chicago holds the work as part of a collection that traces her full arc as one of the most significant American painters of the nineteenth century. The hand-painted oil reproduction renders every nuance of that original surface — the weighted impasto, the depth of shadow, the lived-in confidence of each stroke — in a format made to be lived with rather than kept behind glass.