A Village Bullfight

Goya made this small painting around 1815, just after French troops had finally left Spain and the long, ruinous war of occupation was over. In the same years he was cutting his print series on bullfighting, the Tauromaquia, and this is one of four little cabinet pictures on the theme. There is nothing grand about the fight it shows. A bull has been let loose in a rough village ring, and the crowd presses in around a makeshift barrier while a few men take their chances out in the open dust. Goya was completely deaf by now and in his late sixties. He painted the scene as loose smears of light and shadow, catching the feel of the commotion more than any record of it.