ABSTRACT
By the early 1900s, Mary Cameron’s name was inextricably linked with Spain; her career, however, had started much earlier in Scotland. Despite Cameron’s designation of painting as work, middle-class women and certainly middle-class women artists, suffer a kind of extinction in the midst of discussions of work. The colourful, distinct dress of the Newhaven fishwife provided many artists, not just Cameron, with a taste of the exotic located right near the edges of fashionable Edinburgh. According to the Scotsman, Cameron’s Picadors About to Enter the Bull Ring at Madrid, brought ‘honours’ to the Edinburgh artist by being exhibited well in Paris and attracting a great deal of attention in the French press. Cameron selected for her canvas the moment immediately after the kill when the victorious matador received ‘the plaudits of the spectators’ among whom, of course, was the artist.
