Ernest Hemingway

ERNEST HEMINGWAY INSCRIBED ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPH OF THE RUNNING OF THE BULLS, PAMPLONA, TO BULL FIGHTING ARTIST ROBERTO DOMINGO, 1947

Vintage photograph of the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain, inscribed and signed by Ernest Hemingway to famed bullfighting artist Roberto Domingo, dated 1947. Accompanied by a full Letter of Authenticity from James Spence Authentication (JSA).

Few writers are as inseparably linked to a place as Ernest Hemingway is to Pamplona. For decades, the annual Festival of San Fermín and its legendary Running of the Bulls captivated Hemingway’s imagination, inspiring some of his finest writing and helping shape the public image that would follow him throughout his life.

Offered here is an extraordinary vintage photograph depicting the famed Running of the Bulls through the narrow streets of Pamplona, boldly inscribed by Hemingway in dark ink:

Pamplona
Dear Roberto – Retreat
Your Papa

Ernest Hemingway ’47

What elevates this piece far beyond a conventional signed photograph is its recipient: Roberto Domingo, the celebrated Spanish painter, illustrator, and one of the foremost artistic chroniclers of the bullring in the twentieth century.

Domingo occupies a unique place in Hemingway’s world. His artwork became forever associated with Hemingway’s classic 1932 bullfighting masterpiece, Death in the Afternoon, in which Domingo’s celebrated image, The Bullfighter, appeared on the book’s cover. The friendship and mutual admiration between the Nobel Prize-winning author and the renowned bullfighting artist make this inscription a remarkable intersection of literature, art, and Spanish cultural history.

Dated 1947, the inscription places the photograph during Hemingway’s postwar return to Europe and renewed engagement with Spain. At this stage of his career, Hemingway was already among the most famous writers in the world, yet the inscription carries an unmistakably personal tone. The affectionate closing, “Your Papa,” reveals a familiarity rarely encountered on commercially signed material and provides a glimpse into the author’s private relationships beyond the public persona.

The image itself is quintessential Hemingway: a dramatic view of charging bulls surging through crowded streets while spectators watch from makeshift barriers above. It captures the very spectacle that fascinated Hemingway throughout his life and informed some of his most enduring works.

Artifacts that directly connect Hemingway to Pamplona are highly sought after. Examples that further connect him to Roberto Domingo—the artist whose work became associated with Death in the Afternoon—are exceptionally rare. This photograph represents not merely an autograph, but a tangible document of the cultural circle that surrounded Hemingway and helped define one of the most influential literary careers of the twentieth century.

Provenance & Authentication

This photograph is accompanied by a letter from the original owner, whose family it came from, establishing provenance, as well as a full Letter of Authenticity from James Spence Authentication (JSA), one of the most respected names in autograph authentication.

Condition

Vintage condition is fine, consistent with age and handling.

A Unique Hemingway Association Piece

An exceptional and highly personal Hemingway artifact combining:

• Ernest Hemingway
• Pamplona and the Running of the Bulls
• The world of Spanish bullfighting
• Roberto Domingo
• Death in the Afternoon
• A warm, personal 1947 inscription

A museum-worthy association piece linking two towering figures of twentieth-century bullfighting culture. This photograph is also featured on the official Roberto Domingo website.

Though it is unknown whether he was in Pamplona in 1947, that year was a significant one in the life of Ernest Hemingway. In a small ceremony in June 1947, at the U.S. embassy in Cuba, Hemingway was awarded a Bronze Star for his service as a war correspondent for having circulated “freely under fire in combat areas in order to obtain an accurate picture of conditions. Through his talent of expression, Mr. Hemingway enabled readers to obtain a vivid picture of the difficulties and triumphs of the front-line soldier and his organization in combat.”

Hemingway became a bullfighting aficionado after seeing the Pamplona fiesta in the 1920s, which he wrote about in The Sun Also Rises. In another book, Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway explored the metaphysics of bullfighting—the ritualized, almost religious practice—that he considered analogous to the writer’s search for meaning and the essence of life. In bullfighting, he found the elemental nature of life and death.

Death in the Afternoon was published by Scribner’s in September 1932. As eloquently described by Miriam B. Mandel in her book A Companion to Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon (Camden House, 2004):

“The most arresting feature of the dust jacket is the painting by Roberto Domingo (1883-1956). Under the word “Toros”, a powerful looking bull is pursuing a banderillero who trails a swirling cape of yellow and magenta, as he leaps over the barerra into the confetti-colored crowd. So close is the man’s escape that he seems to be helped over the fence by the bulls approaching horns. The man, however, is not the protagonist of the scene. The center of attention is the charging bull—a splendid animal, with a dappled gray body and a handsome black head outlined against the red barrera. There is power in the broad back and in the hump of muscle that surges up from behind his horns, there is speed in the splayed legs and sinuous line of the spine from neck to tail, and danger in the solid curves of the sharp horns.”

Toros (1923) is an oil painting, one of 18 painted by Domingo between 1915 and 1942, to advertise bullfight festivals in Valencia. The original painting was acquired personally by Hemingway, and still dominates the parlor of his Finca Vigia home in San Francisco de Paula, Cuba (now a museum).

Any discussion concerning bullfighting would be incomplete without some mention of the controversy surrounding it. To that end Hemingway commented, “Anything capable of arousing passion in its favor will surely raise as much passion against it.”

As an aside, “Death in the Afternoon” also refers to a cocktail invented by Hemingway: “Pour one jigger absinthe into a Champagne glass. Add iced Champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink three to five of these slowly. Note: After six of these cocktails The Sun Also Rises.”