Sometimes referred to as the father of Impressionism, Manet inspired a number of artists associated with Impressionism but never exhibited his own art with the group; instead, he continued to strive for acceptance into the mainstream French academy and its public Salons. This was despite his determination to forge a new path for painting: bold colors, visible brushstrokes, modern subjects and points of view.

In 1864, when Manet painted this scene of a Spanish bullfight, he had not yet traveled to Spain. He would make his first and only trip to Madrid the following year. He and many of his contemporaries were enchanted by Spanish art—by artists like Velázquez, Goya, and Murillo—and Spanish subjects like the one he treats here. Manet’s figures are startlingly truncated in this unusual horizontal, rectangular format: the feet are missing from the two figures flanking the bull, which itself is only hinted at through the inclusion of the top of its head and horns, the ridge of its back, and wavy tail. Originally, this painting served as the upper portion of a larger composition entitled An Incident in a Bullfight, exhibited at the 1864 Salon. Harshly criticized for his handling of perspective and what one critic referred to as a bull that looked like a “horned rat,” Manet cut the canvas and created two smaller paintings from it, reworking both. The lower section is the painting known as The Dead Toreador now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, which, X-rays show, included at the top the legs and belly of this bull, painted out by Manet in his reworking.