After the Bullfight

The man turns to the right with both hands raised near his mouth. A dark cap crowns the profile, while a richly ornamented blue-green jacket fills the centre. In front of him, a red cloth falls over a wooden rail. Mary Cassatt’s After the Bullfight concentrates on a costumed figure at rest, with the smoking action taking the place of any spectacle in an arena.

Painted in 1873, the oil on canvas belongs to the Art Institute of Chicago, accession 1969.332, through the bequest of Mrs. Sterling Morton. The recorded inscription at the lower left includes Seville and the year 1873. These details anchor the work in Cassatt’s Spanish period without identifying the sitter or a particular fight. ^[1]

Its subject broadens the familiar account of an artist associated with women and children. The picture is also revealing for the way it combines a precisely organised pose with different kinds of painted surface: repeated costume ornament, broader skin tones and a relatively subdued background.

Two hands close to the face

The hands make the small action conspicuous. One approaches the mouth from below, while the other is raised nearer the face. Bent fingers and wrists create a compact area of movement against the profile. The rest of the figure provides a larger support for that concentration of detail.

The arms do not form identical shapes. One forearm rises more upright in front of the torso; the other extends across the upper right. Their different directions bring the hands together without making a symmetrical pose. Following each arm back towards the shoulder clarifies the arrangement more readily than looking at the fingers in isolation.

The head turns away from the viewer, making the line of nose, lips and chin important. The dark hair and cap frame the face but do not conceal that profile. Small changes between light and shadow describe the cheek and neck, while the background leaves room for the silhouette to register.

Smoking is supported by the institutional inventory’s subject description as well as by the image. The record does not establish an exact tobacco type or a personal account of the moment. The hands and mouth give enough information to identify an activity without supplying a conversation or a story about what the man has just experienced. ^[2]

The title directs thought towards an interval after performance, but no bullfight appears in the canvas. There is no depicted contest whose result can be reconstructed. The absence of an arena narrative concentrates attention on the figure’s body, clothing and small action.

Embroidered costume and a dark cap

The jacket provides the densest pattern. Light marks repeat across blue-green fabric, creating a surface unlike the more broadly handled face or background. Small raised-looking ornaments along the sleeve catch attention as separate accents, while longer bands follow the costume’s construction.

Those repeated details do more than identify an elaborate garment. Their movement across the shoulder and bent arms helps distinguish one part of the body from another. Ornament changes direction with the pose, so pattern and volume remain connected. A uniform flat repetition would describe the jacket differently.

The dark cap supplies a useful counterweight. Its broad mass is less busy than the embroidered clothing beneath it. The contrast lets the viewer move from a relatively compact silhouette at the head to a much denser field around the shoulders and arms. The cap’s edge also extends the head’s shape against the subdued ground.

A pale collar and a narrow warm accent near the neck create another transition between face and jacket. These smaller areas prevent the clothing from reading as one uninterrupted blue-green mass. Cassatt can distinguish materials and layers through differences of colour, edge and density without explaining every seam equally.

The costume identifies a role within the image, not a verified personal biography. It does not name the performer, establish his rank or reveal whether Cassatt observed him at a specific event. Its strongest contribution to the picture is visible: an intricate surface arranged around a body engaged in a small, understandable action.

The red cloth and the rail

The wooden rail crosses the lower foreground, separating the figure from the space immediately before us. Its comparatively straight form contrasts with the bends of arms and shoulders. The rail gives the lower part a strong direction even where the torso disappears behind it.

Dark irregular marks along the timber suggest grain and knots, making its surface different from the ordered repetition on the jacket. The contrast gives two adjacent areas of detail different rhythms: uneven marks along a straight support, repeated ornament around a bending body.

The red cloth hangs over the rail at the right. It adds a broad warm area beneath the busier jacket, bringing colour towards the bottom edge. Its folds extend downwards, creating another direction alongside the more horizontal timber. The meeting of cloth and wood anchors the foreground in different materials.

The red is particularly effective because it is not distributed equally throughout the background. It appears as a substantial local accent, while smaller warm notes occur near the neck and face. Looking moves between those separated areas, rather than finding one continuously warm field.

The background remains relatively open and subdued. It helps the cap, face and embroidered jacket stand forward, but it supplies little architecture. The rail establishes a barrier or support without explaining a whole building. Nothing in the setting securely identifies a particular bullring or backstage room.

The arrangement therefore offers proximity without a complete environment. We can examine fingers, costume and cloth from close range while the larger occasion stays unspecified. That balance is central to the picture’s character: a recognisable performer is presented through particular surfaces and gestures rather than a fully narrated event.

Seville and the Spanish phase

The Seville inscription provides a firmer historical anchor than the title alone. The museum places the painting within Cassatt’s study and work in Spain, when Spanish painting and contemporary responses to it formed part of her artistic enquiry. The inscription identifies a place as well as a year, giving the Spanish setting a documentary basis alongside the costume. ^[1]

The Art Institute’s discussion relates the picture’s tonal handling to Velázquez and its vivid painted accents to Manet. These are critical comparisons that help position the work. They should not become proof that Cassatt copied one specific canvas or adopted every part of another painter’s practice. ^[1]

The distinction leaves plenty to examine. Broad modelling of the face coexists with energetic changes across the jacket. A traditional costumed subject can be described through a pose that appears relatively informal. The painting’s interest lies in how those choices work together, rather than in assigning each visible passage to a separate influence.

Likewise, visible brushwork cannot establish how long the work took or whether the model paused exactly as shown. The surface presents an effect of direct observation, but the finished image does not reveal every decision involved in making it. Composition can be studied without reconstructing an undocumented sitting.

Another Spanish figure: the dancer with a fan

Cassatt’s Spanish Dancer Wearing a Lace Mantilla is another oil dated 1873, now at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, accession 1967.40. A pale lace covering, a partly open fan and a dark surrounding field organise its female figure. ^[16]

The contrast with After the Bullfight is specific. The dancer’s face turns more towards the spectator, while the male figure offers a profile and brings his hands towards the mouth. The fan spreads a broad patterned shape across the lower torso; the other canvas uses embroidered sleeves and a rail to divide that area.

Both place costume at the centre of the visual experience, but lace and embroidery behave differently. The mantilla makes an irregular pale enclosure around the head and shoulders. The bullfighter’s jacket creates denser repeated accents around bent arms. Their patterns give different kinds of information about the bodies beneath them.

The comparison does not identify a shared performance, a shared model or a specific episode in which Cassatt painted both. Nor does an anecdote about Degas’s response to another early portrait belong automatically to these works. Their secure relevance lies in two identified compositions from the Spanish phase.

The Mandolin Player: hands around an object

The Mandolin Player, the 1868 oil identified by Denver Art Museum as Cassatt’s first accepted Salon painting, offers an earlier contrast. Its white blouse and red-orange sash stand against a dark ground, with the instrument held diagonally across the seated figure. ^[3]

There the hands are separated along the instrument: one near its rounded body, the other around the neck. In After the Bullfight, the hands converge close to the face. The change gives the viewer a different path through the composition, from a long connecting diagonal to a much smaller cluster of activity.

Red also occupies a different role. The musician’s sash belongs closely to the clothing and seated body. The bullfighter’s foreground cloth hangs over a separate wooden structure. A similar colour can consequently organise a different relation between figure and setting.

These comparisons show why early figure pictures should not be reduced to a generic dark background and picturesque costume. Cassatt changes the action, the direction of looking, the distribution of pattern and the objects dividing the foreground. Each offers a particular solution to representing a person at close range.

From private ownership to Chicago

The museum’s provenance records a longer collecting history than a simple artist-to-museum transfer. Its later stages include Mrs. Sterling Morton’s purchase in 1959 and the 1969 bequest. Earlier dealer and private-collection movements require distinctions between sales, consignments and loans rather than an assumption that every named custodian owned the work. ^[1]

An older title, Toreador, appears in the National Gallery’s 1970 exhibition catalogue, which illustrates the same composition. The change in wording does not establish another painting. The exact image, date, inscription and museum accession hold the identity together across those records. ^[17]

Looking back at the canvas, begin with the hands near the mouth and follow the arms through the patterned jacket. Then move down to the rail and hanging cloth. The route makes clear how a compact human action, elaborate costume and a strongly divided foreground give After the Bullfight its distinct place within Cassatt’s early work.