Bullfight
Sul dipinto
Bullfight – Death of the Bull (French: Corrida: la mort du taureau) is an oil on canvas painting by Édouard Manet, executed c. 1865. It is now in the Art Institute of Chicago.
With Bullfight (now known as The Fall of the Bullfighter, Musée d'Orsay) and The Fall of the Picador (watercolour, private collection), it forms part of a series of works painted after Manet's return from Spain.
Con le parole del museo
In the fall of 1865, Édouard Manet traveled to Spain for about ten days. This brief trip had a profound impact on his art of this period. In a letter to poet Charles Baudelaire, he described a bullfight he attended in Madrid as “one of the finest, most curious, and most terrifying sights to be seen.” The quick sketches he made as he watched the fights informed several later canvases, including this one. Here, he underscored the tension of the moment—the crowd in the background blends together in a blur while the bullfighter and bull stand off in sharper focus.
Art Institute of ChicagoCC BY 4.0
Scheda
Nel frattempo, nella vita di Édouard Manet
Tutta la vita1863
“The Luncheon on the Grass” at the Salon des Refusés
The Salon of 1863 rejected “The Luncheon on the Grass” (originally “Le Bain”), and Manet exhibited it at the Salon des Refusés, a parallel exhibition initiated by Napoleon III after a public outcry, the jury having accepted only 2,217 of more than 5,000 submissions. The juxtaposition of dressed men and a nude woman and the sketch-like handling caused a scandal; one critic compared the brushwork to a “floor mop”.
1863
Marries Suzanne Leenhoff
In 1863, a year after his father's death, Manet married Suzanne Leenhoff at a Protestant church: a Dutch-born piano teacher two years his senior with whom he had been romantically involved for about ten years. Auguste Manet had employed her to teach his sons the piano, and she may also have been Auguste's mistress.
1863
Married: Suzanne Manet
1865
“Olympia” at the Salon: a scandal
In 1865 the Salon accepted “Olympia”, and the frank depiction of a self-assured prostitute created a scandal; according to Antonin Proust, only the precautions taken by the administration prevented the painting from being punctured and torn. The popular press caricatured it, while the avant-garde, including Courbet, Cézanne and Monet, championed it.
1867
His own pavilion near the Pont de l'Alma
In 1867, during the World's Fair in Paris, Manet set up his own pavilion near the Pont de l'Alma and showed fifty of his best works of the past ten years. Possibly this step led to his works being accepted at the next two Salons.
