The Child's Bath

1893

Oil on canvas, 101.3 × 67.3 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago

A woman holds a child on her lap and washes its feet in a basin. It was number 1 in Cassatt's 1893 solo exhibition at Durand-Ruel's Paris gallery.

From above, the floor tilts up and the dress, rug and chest lie flat as pattern. Like Degas, Cassatt traded the deep space of Salon painting for steep, flattened views.
It followed her color prints of 1890–91, begun after a Japanese print show in Paris.
Look at the child's hand resting on the woman's knee.
The Art Institute of Chicago bought it in 1910.

Well-off households often shared the bathing and feeding of small children with nurses and maids. From the 1890s this care became Cassatt's best-known subject.

Image: Art Institute of Chicago Open Access (CC0) · CC0