The Bullfight

Goya etched 33 plates of the bullring and published them in 1816, and in the 1890s an edition of them was being prepared in France. Toulouse-Lautrec was asked to design the cover, as he had already done for a volume of Goya's Disasters of War. He had reason to want the job. He had seen his first corrida at San Sebastian in 1890, gone on to Madrid the year after to sketch in the rings there, and kept attending the small arena on the rue Pergolese in Paris until it closed. For this study he dropped the flat poster manner he was known for: a man's skull and a bull's skull side by side against the red of a muleta, the cloth a matador works with in the last act. It was sold in 2009 with the collection of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge.