The Child's Bath
The Bath
Mary Cassatt · 1893
01
Paris. April 1890.
725 Japanese prints go on show.
Mary Cassatt goes to see them.
02
Three years later, she paints this.
From above. Looking down.
The way the Japanese printmakers did.
03
Her dress: stripes.
The child's legs run as straight as the stripes.
04
Rug. Wallpaper. Stripes.
Pattern pressed against pattern.
Only the child is bare.
05
Mother and child.
She painted it for decades.
She never married.
She never had a child of her own.
The whole room.
Seen from above.
“You who want to make color prints you couldn't dream of anything more beautiful.”
1910
Paris, 1893. Her solo show at Durand-Ruel.
It is shown as La Toilette de l'Enfant.
Durand-Ruel keeps it seventeen years.
In 1910 the Art Institute of Chicago buys it.
It has been in Chicago ever since.
Mary Cassatt
American · Impressionism · 1844 to 1926
Sources · 5