The Bullfight

Three bullfighters stand at intervals against a red wooden barrier. Green cloth hangs beside the figure on the left, yellow cloth falls at the right, and a black bull enters along the lower edge. Édouard Manet’s The Bullfight turns these separate figures, bright fabrics and narrow bands of space into an unusually wide composition.

The Frick Collection in New York dates this oil on canvas to 1864. Measuring 47.9 × 108.9 cm, it belongs to the Henry Clay Frick Bequest, accession 1914.1.86.^[1] Its present form preserves part of a larger painting that Manet subsequently divided and reworked.

Red Boards across the Canvas

The barrier stretches almost the full width of the painting. Its red-brown boards vary in tone, with darker vertical divisions and shorter horizontal marks interrupting the surface. Some passages are warmer and brighter, while others deepen towards brown.

A narrow grey-green ledge follows the bottom of the barrier. Beneath it, pale sand makes another horizontal strip, widening towards the right. Together, the ledge and sand give the standing figures a setting while preserving the painting’s strong emphasis on width.

Above the boards, spectators appear in a compressed band of light and dark marks. Black hats and pale clothing emerge from the crowd, with a few hands and arms extending over the barrier. The people are only selectively described, yet their close grouping gives the upper edge a different density from the more widely separated figures below.

The Left Figure and Green Cape

The figure on the left wears a dark hat and a jacket picked out with blue and white touches. A pale shirt forms a narrow opening at the chest, widening into a light waistband. Below, pale trousers extend towards the lower edge, where the legs continue beyond the frame.

One hand rests near the hip. The other gathers a green cape beside the body, making a dense area of cloth that reaches down towards the ledge. Long strokes describe its hanging folds, while lighter green marks catch the turns of the fabric. A warmer orange passage appears beside it, introducing another colour into the mass of drapery.

The cape changes the figure’s silhouette. On one side, the arm bends inward towards the waist; on the other, the cloth extends outward before narrowing below.

Light touches across the jacket suggest decoration without making every detail equally distinct. The face receives a few warm and dark marks beneath the hat.

Raised Arms at the Centre

The central bullfighter turns towards the barrier. One arm reaches up to its top, while the other extends towards the right. These two directions open the upper body across the boards, creating a more active outline than the compact standing figure on the left.

Blue clothing and warm gold-coloured edging distinguish the jacket. A light waistband curves across the torso below it, and dark knee breeches lead to pale stockings. The feet are described with pointed black shoes, one projecting above the sand and the other set at a different angle.

The light lower legs make this figure particularly easy to locate. They form two narrow pale shapes against the darker boards and warm ground.

The body’s turn also changes how much of the costume is visible. The broad blue back, edged jacket and bent arms present a pattern of overlapping shapes, with the dark hat tilted over a partly concealed face.

The Right Figure and Yellow Cloth

The figure at the right wears a dark hat above a jacket described through short white, black and red touches. The pale shirt and waistband separate that patterned upper body from the lighter trousers below. Here too, the lower legs are cut by the frame.

A large yellow cloth hangs at the painting’s right edge. Broad vertical strokes suggest its length and folds, with darker passages interrupting the brighter surface. The figure’s hands and forearms meet near its upper part, connecting the cloth to the body through a much smaller cluster of forms.

The yellow answers the green cape at the opposite side. Between them, blue clothing marks the central figure. These separated colours help the eye move across a scene otherwise dominated by red boards, pale ground and dark hats.

The Bull at the Lower Edge

The bull appears as a black form pressed against the bottom of the painting. Its tail curls towards the left, while the ridge of its back extends towards a head and horns farther right. Much of the animal continues outside the visible field.

The pale sand makes these dark contours easier to distinguish. The horns rise into the lighter strip, introducing oblique lines beneath the barrier’s long horizontal ledge. At the same time, the animal’s back echoes the painting’s width, linking the separated figures through a dark passage below them.

This close framing gives the bull a different presence from the standing people. The viewer sees selected parts of the animal while the human figures rise towards the spectators above.

From a Larger Salon Painting

The Frick identifies this canvas as the surviving upper portion of An Incident in a Bullfight, exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1864. It reports that the original work attracted criticism of its perspective.^[1]

The museum’s account of its 1999 reunion with the other surviving fragment explains that Manet preserved two sections, discarded a central strip and reworked the pieces as independent paintings.^[2] The current images therefore show compositions that developed after the larger canvas was divided.

The Frick’s audio commentary describes a further connection revealed by X-rays: parts of the bull’s earlier legs and belly survive beneath paint in the lower fragment.^[1] This museum-reported finding links forms that the two current compositions now separate.

Beside The Dead Toreador

The lower surviving painting is The Dead Toreador, now in Washington. The National Gallery of Art dates it to probably 1864 and records an oil on canvas measuring 75.9 × 153.3 cm, Widener Collection, 1942.9.40.^[3]

Its present composition isolates a reclining figure on a dark ground. The head lies towards the lower right, with the feet extending towards the upper left. Black clothing, white stockings and pale fabric establish a long diagonal, while a pink cape enters beside the outstretched arm.

The Frick painting distributes attention among several standing figures, the barrier and the cropped bull. The Washington work concentrates it around one body and the surrounding empty space. Viewed separately, the two paintings demonstrate how different framings can emerge from material once contained within a larger scene.

The National Gallery’s exhibition history records their reunion at the Frick in 1999.^[3] That pairing brought the surviving works together while allowing their later, independent compositions to remain visible.

Spain before and after Madrid

The 1864 Salon painting preceded Manet’s journey to Madrid in 1865. The Musée d’Orsay’s account of its Manet–Velázquez exhibition places his engagement with Spanish art both before and after that visit, and includes bullfighting among the Spanish subjects explored by French painters.^[4]

Henry Clay Frick’s Acquisition

The Frick’s collection history records the painting with Baron Vitta in Paris, then J. H. Dunn in London and the dealer Knoedler, before its acquisition by Henry Clay Frick in 1914.^[1]