After the Bullfight

Cassatt signed this in the lower left with her initials, the word Seville, and the year 1873. She had gone to Spain that winter and stayed about six months, working from a studio in the Casa de Pilatos, a 16th-century palace in the old city.

Spanish subjects were in fashion in Paris then. Manet had made toreros and majas modern a decade earlier, largely painted in a Paris studio from hired models in borrowed costume. Cassatt went to the place itself and put its name into her signature. The moment she chose is the one after the crowd has gone, with the man still in his embroidered suit and entirely at ease. The paint on that costume is laid on thick and fast, and she was 28 when she did it, six years away from her first exhibition with the Impressionists in Paris.