When Manet was excluded from the Exposition Universelle of 1867, he decided to mount an independent exhibition of his own work. Among the fifty paintings he showed were all the Metropolitan's large-scale figure compositions from the 1860s. A Matador was one of twenty with a Spanish theme. Yet, unlike his earlier bullfight subjects, it was painted after Manet's first and only trip to Spain in 1865. Both the absence of narrative detail and the model's contemporary appearance mitigate any anecdotal content that the gesture of salute may suggest. The artist's brother, Eugène Manet, may have posed for this work.

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