A matador in a gleaming gold-and-pink traje de luces executes the elegant pase afarolado — cape swept high over his head in a swirling arc — as a charging bull lunges past at close quarters, banderillas already planted in its shoulders. The painting's loose, impressionistic brushwork captures the heat and dust of the Mexican plaza de toros in vivid ochre, crimson, and earth tones. Sender Mary, writing from Mexico City sometime around April 22, tells her friend Ellen back in Rochester, New York that it can "certainly get warm here, especially about noon — about 90 in the sun today. Beginning to get a tan." The warmth practically radiates off both the painted arena and the message itself.