The Authentic Bullfight

As such in his trip to Spain, Manet expressed more excitement for viewing a bullfight than any of his other events on his agenda. In a letter to his friend Henri Fantin-Latour during his visit on September 3, 1865, Manet wrote:

I’m disappointed; the weather is terrible this morning and I’m afraid the bullfight which should take place this evening and which I’m so much looking forward to maybe postponed, till heaven knows when […] Madrid is a pleasant town… in the street one still sees lot of local costumes, and the bullfighters are also strikingly dressed (qtd. in Wilson-Bareau Manet by Himself 34).

In this letter to Fantin-Latour, Manet’s repetition of bullfight-related topics and outward agony about possible missing a bullfight reflects his unrelenting desire to witness a bullfight in person. He needed to watch and analyze the event of the Spanish books and art works that he enjoyed. And indeed the clouds held back their droplets and Manet saw his first bullfight on September 3. It is believed that The Bullfight (1865) represented Manet's witness to the event (Isaacson 18). This experience changed his theatrical interpretation of the bullfight toward a more authentic study of anticipation and action. Only a first-hand experience would allow him the chance to produce the body-poses of death and triumph. This shift from copying past art to recreating the life that Manet experienced demonstrates his a step toward modernity and the depiction of contemporary life.

Manet’s depictions continued to become more authentic and modern when Manet returned to France. His new enthusiasm for live bullfighting encouraged him to depict more in depth the bullfight event. In a letter to Zacharie Astruc on September 17, 1865 describing his Spanish journey, Manet explained:

The most outstanding sight is the bullfight. I saw a magnificent one, and when I get back to Paris I plan to put a quick impression on canvas: the colorful crowd, and the dramatic aspect as well, the picador and horse overturned, with the bull’s horns ploughing into them and horde of chulos trying to draw the furious beast away (Wilson-Bareau Manet by Himself 36-37).

As Manet indicated to his friend, Zacharie Astruc, he wished to record his bullfight experience as quickly as possible once he returned to Partis. The The Bullfight (1865) translated the graphic scenes that Manet saw in the live Spanish bullfight that he described to Astruc into art. In this watercolor, he utilized his observations of the live bullfight to render the violent death of the horse. Unlike his previous works, this watercolor model portrays the bullfight as authentic rather than a spectacle. The horns of the bull slash into the skin of the arching horse in distress. Illustrating the collapsing horse’s actual pose during its horn-spearing death conveys a harsher, more authentic aspect of bullfighting that an arbitrary actor’s awkward prone-death cannot. The death-poses of the horse, eminent trouble for the picador and triumphant murder by the bull, fully convey the terror of the fight. Here Manet showed the audience attempting to help the picador distract the beast, which amplifies the passionate interaction of the audience with the bullfight. This work effectively places the viewer inside the intense moment of life and death during the bullfight rather making the viewer a spectator of a bullfight theater production.

Emphasizing the importance of experience over fantasy, Manet makes a point to recreate, in engaging detail, the bullfight that he saw on canvas. To his modernist friend and critic, Baudelaire, Manet wrote:

One of the finest, most curious and most terrifying sights to be seen is a bullfight. When I get back I hope to put on canvas the brilliant, glittering effect and also the drama of the corrida I saw (qtd. in Wilson- Bareau Manet by Himself 36).

The fact that Manet chose to tell Baudelaire that he would “put on canvas” the event that he “saw” explicitly indicates his shift to depicting authentic bullfights. To recreate the “terrifying sight,” in The Bullfight (1865-66) and The Bullfight (1865-67) the bullfighters demonstrate different evocative moments in a bullfight. In The Bullfight (1865-66), Manet illustrates the moment of the horrifying death of the horse by the bull. He depicts the “bull’s horns ploughing” into the horse in the middle of the ring. Manet portrays the worried bullfighting characters in the background in frantic running motions, which emphasizes the “glittering effect” of facing death. The later The Bullfight (1865-67) captures the toreador in a pose of action. Turning his back toward the audience, the toreador heroically encounters the staring bull. By capturing this moment and these positions, the artist evokes the intense sensation of being in the bullfighting ring. The bullfighting “bien suerte” pose, which literally means the good luck pose in Spanish, highlights the heightened awareness of this life or death moment (Ramon 35). Sharply contrasting the earlier “espada” work, the characters in the bullring do not appear to be acting. The bullfighter actually interacts with the bull in a come-hither position and not just a half-effort brandishing lunge. These “brilliant, glittering” images of moments of decisions and reactions could only be reproduced by someone who experienced the event. This blatant shift from theatrical spectacle to dramatic reality enforces Manet’s independent and more authentic interpretation of the bullfights. These works epitomize that by witnessing an authentic bullfight, Manet could use his experience to create powerful images that engage audiences with the bullfight rather than view actors posing as bullfighters, as he had been forced to do in his earlier works. Manet's ability to engage the audience with the bullfight signified his progression toward more modern and contemporary works.

(Top) Eduoard Manet. The Bullfight, 1865. Watercolor. Getty Museum, New York.

(Middle)Eduoard Manet, The Bullfight, 1865-86. Oil on Canvas. Musee d’Orsay, Paris.

(Bottom) Eduoard Manet. The Bullfight, 1865-67. Oil on Canvas. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.