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A woman kneels to test the water in a freestanding bathtub with one hand as she braces a nude child against her knee with the other in this vertical, colored print. The skin of both the woman and baby are the white of the paper. Their facial features and bodies are outlined with light brown, and their hair drawn in with faint black lines. The woman’s hair is pulled back from a high forehead, and she has a straight nose, pursed lips, and a slight double chin. Her long-sleeved, floor-length dress is a flat area of straw yellow. The baby turns toward the woman’s body and hangs their arms over her bracing hand. The baby has short, wispy, black hair with delicate facial features, a rotund belly, and satisfyingly pudgy rolls on the legs. The tub and the corner where the floor meets the wall are drawn in with brown lines. There are some smudges across the paper, especially at the edges. The artist wrote her initials in graphite under the lower left corner, “MC.”

Mary Cassatt

The Bath, 1890-1891

Not on View

Medium

color drypoint, softground etching, and aquatint

Dimensions

plate: 32.07 × 24.77 cm (12 5/8 × 9 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Rosenwald Collection

Catalogue Raisonné

Mathews and Shapiro 1989, no. 5, iv/xvii

Accession Number

1943.3.2736

Artists / Makers

Mary Cassatt (artist) American, 1844 - 1926

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

recto: at lower left in graphite: MC

Exhibition History

1951: Mary Cassatt and her Parisian Friends, Pasadena Art Institute, CA, 1951, no. 36.

1967: The Graphic Art of Mary Cassatt, organized by the Museum of Graphic Art, New York, and circulated to 8 venues (Cooper Union Museum, New York; National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Detroit Institute of Arts; Herron Museum of Art, Indianapolis; Cincinnati Art Museum; University of California, Los Angeles; 1967-1968, no. 49.

Bibliography

1979: Breeskin, Adelyn Dohme. Mary Cassatt: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Graphic Work. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979, no. 143, v/xi.

1989: Mathews, Nancy Mowll, and Barbara Stern Shapiro. Mary Cassatt: The Color Prints. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989, no. 5, iv/xvii.