Bullfight, Suerte de Varas

Bullfight, Suerte de Varas, painted around 1824 and now at the J. Paul Getty Museum, was made during Goya's voluntary exile in Bordeaux following the restoration of Ferdinand VII's absolute authority and the threat to liberal intellectuals that followed. The suerte de varas — the opening act in which mounted picadors weaken the bull's neck with lances — was a subject Goya had treated in his Tauromaquia print series of 1816, and returning to bullfighting subjects during Bordeaux exile suggests the nostalgic pull of deeply Spanish subject matter from a distance. His technique in the Bordeaux period was characteristically looser and more impressionistic than his Madrid work, using broad, fluid strokes that give the arena scene an atmospheric immediacy quite different from the precise etched lines of the prints. The Getty Museum's acquisition of this late work places it in Los Angeles, where it can be studied alongside the collection's other Spanish art holdings. The late Goya bullfighting paintings occupy a position between personal nostalgia for Spanish culture and formal experiment with his most fluid late technique.

Goya captures the violent action of the picador's lance against the charging bull with bold, summary brushwork and a bright, sunlit palette. The dynamic composition and the energetic handling demonstrate the undiminished vitality of his artistic vision in old age.