The Child's Bath by Mary Cassatt is an oil on canvas from 1893, painted in France, where Cassatt lived and worked. It measures 100.3 by 66.1 centimeters and hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago. The picture shows a woman in a long dress with green, lilac, and white stripes, seated with a small child on her lap, washing the child's foot in a white basin on the floor.

What the picture shows

The picture shows the pair from a steep angle, as if the viewer is looking over them. A woman in a long dress with broad vertical stripes of green, lilac, and white sits on a patterned carpet of red, orange, green, and black. She bends her head, with dark hair tied up, toward the child on her lap. Her right hand washes the child's left foot in a white basin on the floor. The child, naked except for a white towel around the waist, looks down at the feet in the water. The child's left hand rests on the woman's knee, and the woman's left arm circles the child's waist. On the right, a white water jug with a painted pink flower sits beside the basin. Behind them, a green painted chest or dresser with flower decoration stands against a wall with patterned wallpaper at the upper left. Flat areas of color with strong outlines flatten the space. The signature 'Mary Cassatt' is at the lower left.

When and why The Child's Bath by Mary Cassatt was painted

In 1893 Mary Cassatt had lived in France for most of her adult life and had already shown work in several Impressionist exhibitions, beginning in 1879. Her focus had moved toward quiet scenes of mothers and children at home. The steep viewpoint and flat, outlined shapes reflect her study of Japanese woodblock prints, which had impressed her at a Paris exhibition in 1890 and inspired her series of color prints of 1890-1891. That same year her large mural went on view in the Woman's Building at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In The Child's Bath, Cassatt adapted the Japanese print aesthetic to an oil painting of a daily routine, using broad areas of color and a high angle to keep the scene direct and unsentimental.

Seeing it at home

A hand-painted copy of The Child's Bath should keep the original vertical proportions, about 100 by 66 centimeters, or be scaled at the same 2:3 ratio. Flat, even brushwork with visible outlines is most important in the striped dress and the child's body. The palette follows green, white, red, orange, and black, with the water jug's pink flower and the patterned carpet as useful checks.