Description
A toreador lies stretched across the ground in Édouard Manet’s print, his head at the right and feet extending toward the left. Pale hands interrupt the darkness of his costume. The long horizontal body brings the spectacle of bullfighting to a stark stillness, concentrating attention on its human consequence rather than the movement and excitement of the arena.
Created in 1867–68, the etching and aquatint brings the subject into a graphic medium of line and tone. The print’s interest lies in the concentration of attention on one figure, where a familiar public performance gives way to a more intimate confrontation with bodily stillness. Manet does not need a crowded arena to sustain that significance. The work allows the subject’s gravity to remain immediate, making what has stopped as compelling as an action unfolding.
Read our guide to giclée prints, browse more Édouard Manet prints, or explore Mlle. Victorine in the Costume of an Espada.
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