La Tauromachie

Two skulls against a red muleta: death looked in the face, for the man and for the bull. In 1894 Toulouse-Lautrec, painter of cabarets, made this stark study for the cover of a book of Goya's bullfighting prints.

The story behind the painting

La Tauromachie is an oil on cardboard that Toulouse-Lautrec made in 1894 as a preparatory study for the cover of a book gathering the thirty-three prints of Francisco de Goya's La Tauromaquia. The road to it began in 1890, when he went to Spain and saw a bullfight in San Sebastian. The next year he stayed in Madrid and brought back sketches of bullfights, and soon after his return he received the commission for the Goya cover.

What to look for

The picture holds only a few elements, and that is its force. Two skulls, standing for two protagonists of the bullfight, appear against the red of a muleta, the red cloth of the bullring. The French source reads it as death faced directly: the death of the man and the death of the animal. Instead of his usual decorative manner, the painter reached for a blunt, strong image that matched the emotion he felt in the arena.

Meaning and intent

Toulouse-Lautrec was a great admirer of Goya and had already designed the cover of another book of his prints, The Disasters of War. His friend and patron Claude Roger-Marx strongly encouraged him in this task. The bullfight itself had taken hold of him: in Paris he went faithfully to the arena on the rue Pergolese until the day it closed. This small study shows that passion meeting his respect for the older Spanish master, and pushing him away from his own habits.

Legacy

The bullfight he saw in San Sebastian also inspired other artists of his time. According to the source, the same spectacle gave Henri Matisse and Jules Pascin the idea of painting figures dressed as toreros, and later Auguste Renoir painted Vollard as a toreador in the same vein. Within Toulouse-Lautrec's work, best known for dancers, singers and cafes, La Tauromachie stands apart as one of his barest images. It is now in the collection of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge.