La Tauromaquia

Goya had been an aficionado of bullfighting since his youth, but it was not before he was nearly seventy years of age that he turned to this grand and ancient rite as a subject of his art. In 1814-16 he created a series of etchings with aquatint depicting the evolution of the bullfight. In 1816 he published a selection of 33 of these prints under the title La Tauromaquia in a small edition of unknown size. The publication was met with little success - this First Edition remained the only one printed within the artist’s lifetime.
When Goya began working on these etchings, the Peninsular War (1808-1814), which Goya had so unflinchingly depicted in Los Desastres de la Guerra, had just ended. To a certain degree, La Tauromaquia can be seen as a continuation of the Desastres: once more Goya's subject is fighting, acts of cruelty, bravery, cowardice, and death. He is less interested in the colourful spectacle of the fiesta – the crowds in the stands are merely hinted at – than in the mortal encounter between man and bull, depicted in dark sepia ink and brilliant white highlights against a backdrop of varying tones of grey. It is these subtle gradations of the aquatint tone, depicting light and shade and evoking the heat and dust of the ring, which lend these dramatic, at times horrific scenes a haunting atmosphere and ethereal beauty.