Bullfight

Édouard Manet · 1865–66

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

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.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Impressionism

Painted in the years immediately following Manet's transformative trip to Spain, *Bullfight* captures the heat and danger of the arena with a confidence that sets it apart from anything produced by his French contemporaries. Manet travelled to Madrid in 1865, where he encountered Velázquez and Goya for the first time in the original — an experience he described as the most important of his artistic life. The influence shows here in the economy of the composition: figures reduced to essentials, shadow used boldly rather than blended away, and a sense of arrested movement that feels modern even now. The work is closely connected to a larger painting Manet reportedly cut apart after harsh criticism — *Episode from a Bullfight* — making this canvas part of a well-documented act of artistic revision that is itself a small piece of nineteenth-century art history. Now held at the Art Institute of Chicago, the original rewards close looking with its raw, direct handling of paint. Our hand-painted oil reproduction is made by skilled artists working from high-resolution reference, preserving Manet's loose, assured brushwork and the warm ochre tones of the arena so that the energy of the original translates faithfully to your wall.