Unfortunate charge of a powerful bull (Bullfighting B)

See How the ancient Spaniards hunted bulls on horseback in the countryside.

This scene is very agitated and saturated with characters, like most of the scenes Goya painted at the beginning of the original series. The use of aquatint is striking, the vigorous effect it creates giving the scene a dramatic character. Paradoxically, for this reason, because of the effects created by the aquatint in the right half of the composition, Goya is thought to have discarded the print from the original series.

We see a bull being carried off a horse, which is completely turned around and the picador who was riding it is falling on the other side. Behind appears a large group of men, probably pimps, who try to separate the bull from the horse, whipping it with pikes, while they watch the scene without getting too excited.On the right-hand side there is another group of three men with their backs to the bullring. The light especially illuminates the cruellest part of the scene, the encounter between the horse and the bull, and part of the group of men on the left. The right half of the composition is illuminated by the curious effect generated by the aquatint.

In terms of subject matter, the print is related to two engravings from the original Bullfighting series, specifically Fall of a bullfighter from his horse under the bull and Two groups of bullfighters being run over by a single bull at once, as the subject matter is the same.

Lafuente Ferrari stresses that the engraving has the typical characteristics of the first scenes in the series. Martínez-Novillo, for his part, points out that the three scenes showing the fall of the picadors (26, 32 and B) are among the most important in the series, as they reflect the events with notable veracity, movement and violence, both conceptually and visually. Furthermore, he rules out the possibility that they reflect anti-bullfighting ideas, as some authors have suggested, as in reality what Goya did was to tell the events as they happened, although he was aware of their plasticity. He thinks, however, that in this case he may have introduced a certain degree of self-censorship due to the crudeness of the scene, which in principle he was satisfied with, as he signed it on the plate. He relates it to the other prints in the series that deal with the suerte de varas and its incidents (22, 26-28 and 32).

There is a preparatory drawing of the present print, also titled Unfortunate charge of a powerful bull (Bullfighting B).