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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 people and objects are outlined lightly with black, and both the woman and baby’s hair are incised with delicate black lines. The woman and baby’s skin are the white of the paper, and the rest of the background is smudged with smoke gray to show the texture of the paper. 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 has a narrow collar and is pleated across the chest and at the cuff we can see. The dress is filled in with a field of butter yellow and patterned with a floral design. 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.

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, xii/xvii

Accession Number

1943.3.2740

Artists / Makers

Mary Cassatt (artist) American, 1844 - 1926

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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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. 51.

Bibliography

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

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