third french republicconcept:era modern
The Child's Bath
Oil on canvas (1893) by Mary Cassatt, depicting a woman bathing a child's feet from a high viewpoint with flattened, Japanese-influenced composition. Cassatt's most celebrated work.
Scholarly Significance
Mary Cassatt's masterwork synthesising Impressionism and Japanese compositional flatness. Anchors the intimate maternal subject and American women's contribution to the Impressionist movement.
Notes
- ·Mary Cassatt painted The Child's Bath in 1893 in her studio in Mesnil-Théribus, France.
- ·The dramatically high viewpoint — looking down on the woman and child — was directly influenced by Japanese woodblock prints, particularly the work of Utamaro and Hiroshige.
- ·The bold decorative striped dress and patterned carpet flatten the picture space in a way anticipating Post-Impressionism and early modernism.
- ·Cassatt exhibited this work at her first solo show at the Durand-Ruel gallery, Paris, in 1893.
- ·The subject — intimate female domesticity and child-care — was Cassatt's signature domain; she transformed scenes of women's private life into formally ambitious paintings equal to any public history painting.
- ·Purchased by the Art Institute of Chicago in 1910.