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.