The Child's Bath
1893 · Oil on canvas · Art Institute of Chicago
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About this work
- Artist
- Mary Cassatt (1844–1926)
- Year
- 1893
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Original size
- 100.3 × 66.1 cm
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Movement
- Impressionism
A woman in a striped dress holds a small child on her lap and washes its feet in a basin of water, both of them looking down at the task, with a patterned carpet, a painted chest and a jug filling the shallow space around them. Cassatt painted it in Paris in 1893, the year after she completed a mural for the Chicago World's Fair, and it is the best known of her many pictures of women and children. The steep viewpoint from above, the flat patterns and the firm outlines come from the Japanese prints she had studied closely two years earlier when making her own colour etchings. The subject is not sentimental; it is about attention and touch. The Art Institute of Chicago bought the painting in 1910, during the artist's lifetime.
This print reproduces the whole work, uncropped, from a high-resolution scan of the original. The original is in the public domain.
Where it works
A woman washing a child's feet, with flat patterns and firm outlines, belongs in a nursery, child's bedroom or bathroom at 16×24. Natural wood on a white or soft pink wall; the steep viewpoint reads well above a changing table or bath.
Style, size & framing detail
- Style
- Impressionism painting
- Era
- 19th century (1893)
- Orientation
- Portrait
- Mood
- classic
- Rooms
- bedroom, bathroom, nursery, living room, dining room
- Good gift for
- housewarming, art lovers
Size. We'd hang this one at 16×24. Prints at 12×18, 16×24 in — 12×18 for a shelf, desk or a gallery-wall grid; 16×24 above a desk, console or in a hallway.
Framing. The gallery ground is part of the print, so frame it without a mat — natural wood flatters the lighter palette; black sharpens it.
Pairing. Pairs as a set of three with other famous painting prints (10% off three or more).
Details & materials
Shipping & returns
Is this the whole painting, or a crop?
Is The Child's Bath in the public domain?
What is it printed on?
When was The Child's Bath painted, and in what medium?
What size works above a sofa or bed?
About this design
The Madten promise
An exhibition poster
The same artwork as a gallery exhibition poster — title, artist & date typeset beneath the image on a soft ground.
The full-bleed edition
The painting printed edge to edge, filling the whole sheet (very slightly cropped to fit) — and available on gallery-wrapped canvas.
