The Child's Bath

In 1891, Mary Cassatt created the oil painting with two subjects, a mother figure and a young child. The genre scene is based on the everyday bathing of a child, a moment that is "special by not being special".[4] The female figure holds up the child firmly and protectively with her left hand while the other hand carefully washes the child's feet. The small and chubby left arm of the child braces against the mother's thigh, while the other hand is clamped firmly on the child's own thigh. The mother's right hand presses firmly but still gently on the foot in the basin, mimicking the child's own pressure on her thigh. To indicate depth, Cassatt painted the faces to recede into space. The paint strokes are layered and rough, creating thick lines that outline the figures and stand them out from the patterned background. The hand of the artist is evident through the roughness of the strokes and can be better viewed from a distance.

Cassatt was heavily influenced by some of her fellow Impressionist peers, especially Edgar Degas. The first Impressionist painting to arrive in the United States was a pastel by Degas in 1875 that she purchased. Cassatt began to exhibit with the Impressionists in 1877, where she met other fellow Impressionists like Claude Monet and Berthe Morisot. In 1890, she was struck by the prints of the Japanese woodcuts at the Beaux-Arts Academy in Paris during the exhibition, three years prior to painting The Child's Bath. Cassatt was drawn to the simplicity and clarity of the Japanese design, and the skillful use of blocks of color. The perspective of the painting was inspired by Japanese prints and Degas. "Japanese printmakers were more interested in decorative impact than precise perspective."[5]

• Janes, Karen Hosack. "Great Paintings". New York: Dorling Kindersley Limited, 2011. ISBN 978-0-7566-8675-8. 179–180.

External video

Cassatt's The Child's Bath, Smarthistory[1]

• The Art Institute of Chicago The Bath
• SmartHistory Discussion about The Child's Bath