Bullfight, Suerte de Varas

Goya painted this scene of the picadors in 1824, when he was living in exile in Bordeaux, far from the Spain he had recorded for decades. Bullfighting was one of his favourite subjects. As early as 1816 he had published the print series La Tauromaquia, shortly after the spectacle had become legal again. Yet the bullfight had long been a matter of dispute. Some Enlightenment critics attacked it harshly, and Charles III had banned the fighting and killing of bulls in 1785, a prohibition his successor Charles IV made complete in 1805. After the Peninsular War and the return of Ferdinand VII, the sport regained its popularity. Goya gave the painting to his friend Joaquín María Ferrer in July 1824, and it is thought that Ferrer wrote the inscription on the back, naming the painter and the date. In the composition, the bull stands calm and motionless, almost as if the crowd had gathered to admire it, while the picadors look frantic. The pale horse stands out against the animal, and the spectators, barely suggested behind the wooden fence, stay in the background. Goya works through contrast: a dark underlayer shows through in the distance, and the principal figures are built up in thick impasto. Scholars read the picture in different ways. Corry Cropper links Goya's attraction to dramatic tension with the political climate of his homeland, seeing in the bullfight a metaphor for popular resistance to authority. François Zumbiehl, for his part, stresses the popular exuberance the canvas conveys. That is why the work still holds attention: its power lies in the scene itself and in what it suggests beyond it.

Painter

Francisco Goya

Date

1824

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

495 × 610 cm

Museum

J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

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