Although Goya had already shown an interest in lithography while in Madrid, it was in Bordeaux tht he fully explored the expressive possibilities of this new medium. In November 1825, a year after his arrival in the city, he made the four prints of the Bulls of Bordeaux, of which 100 copies were run off at the workshop of the celebrated lithographer Cyprien Gaulon. The lithograph suited the needs of the octogenarian Goya in that it could be executed quickly, since it consisted of drawing directly on the stone, and spontaneity was therefore its essential quality. The style of these lithographs is very close to the one he used at the same time in the two Bordeaux drawing albums. In both media, Goya gave free rein to his capacity for invention on the basis of certain lived experiences, sometimes more or less distant memories, like the bullfighting scenes, and sometimes rather closer, like the popular characters he had seen in the French streets.

The strokes of the lithographic crayon on the stone, of different thicknesses and intensities, combined with the effects of the scraper, used to make white lines, gave rise to vibrant compositions in which he once again represented a bullfight characterised by the violence and irrationality that go hand in hand with it. The multitudes that had appeared in The Disasters of War, and very particularly in La Tauromaquia, come very much to the fore in these prints, often with deformed physiognomies and terrified faces. These prints are the expression of Goya’s character, faithful to his aesthetic and ideological convictions, and always ready to continue experimenting. It may be that their success was delayed, as had occurred also with the engravings of La Tauromaquia, by the combination of their formal freedom and their tragic character. Today, however, they are regarded as one of the high points of the art of lithography and of Goya’s oeuvre.