Masterpiece Story: Child’s Bath by Mary Cassatt

Historical Context

Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) was the only American to exhibit works with the French Impressionists. She was a rebel of her time and broke against the societal expectations of 19th-century America. Cassatt never married and never had children, unlike other women of her time. Instead, she unconventionally traveled alone across Europe throughout the 1860s and 1870s. Cassatt was derided by her contemporaries as a stray American spinster, but she did not let this derision affect her ego and self-worth. She channeled her free time, money, and energy into her artistic career as a painter.

Mary Cassatt moved to Paris in 1874 and later befriended Edgar Degas in 1877 while visiting the Musée du Louvre. Soon afterwards, Cassatt was one of the Impressionists alongside Degas, Manet, and Monet. However, unlike her male colleagues, she could not easily visit the many clubs and cafés of Parisian nightlife. She was tied to her house as a caregiver to her two aging parents who lived with her.

Also, despite her unconventional choice as a single woman (for 19th-century America and France), Cassatt did follow the respectable conventions of avoiding the taverns and seedy places of Montmartre where many male artists congregated. Therefore, Cassatt drew inspiration from her domestic world. Hence, Cassatt’s classic subjects are women and children performing everyday domestic scenes such as taking tea, reading, and bathing. Child’s Bath, one of her masterpieces, encapsulates such a subject with the strength of her mature, signature style.

Composition of Child’s Bath

Child’s Bath is an oil on canvas measuring 101.3 cm by 67.3 cm (39 15/16 in. by 26 1/2 in). It features two figures, a woman and a child (a little girl?), within a scene of bathing. The woman and child are not identified in historical records, therefore, the sitters’ names are unknown. Consequently, the woman could be a nanny to the child, but due to Cassatt’s liking for mothers and their children, it is more likely to suppose the woman is the child’s mother.

Mother’s Dress

The mother wears a long flowing dress with a striped pattern of white, pink, and green. It is a typical morning dress worn in the house when company is not expected. In today’s parlance, it would be considered loungewear.

Cassatt captures a small detail in the mother’s dress that adds to the scene’s realism. Look at the mother’s wrist at the left side of the painting. The sleeve cuff of the dress is unbuttoned and reversed to expose the mother’s wrist. The mother clearly did not want her cuff to get wet while bathing her child, so she rolled it back further on her arm. It is a small and natural detail, but one easily overlooked by the untrained eye of a novice artist. Cassatt is in her prime and captures this detail.

Tenderness

There is a feminine tenderness between the mother and child. The mother wraps her left arm around the child’s waist while her right hand caresses and washes the child’s right foot.

Both of their faces peer downward toward the large wash basin in occupied thought. Their rosy cheeks speak to their general good health and imply the warmth felt between them.

Security

There is an overwhelming tranquility to the bathing scene. Everything feels peaceful and serene. The water in the basin has the shallowest ripples, implying faint movements of the child’s foot and the mother’s hand submerged in the water.

The mother’s dress feels monumental and stationary, like a backdrop to the child’s partially undressed state. The ceramic jug and the ceramic basin in the foreground further cement the scene and give visual stability to the viewer. Overall, there are feelings of stability and comfort as expected in the environment of a loving domestic moment. Everyone wants to feel safe and secure at home, and Cassatt captures this sense of security during this intimate moment of bath time.

Shadow Box

Child’s Bath does not have the long views of a Monet landscape or the sprawling perspective of a Degas dance hall. Instead, it feels like a shadow box where the figures are within a small shallow space, almost like figurines on a shelf. The foreground and background feel compact and narrow. These feelings of narrowness are implied by the extreme angle of the carpet patterns.

The tightness of the scene is further implied by the bright blocks of colors behind the figures from the pink floral wallpaper and the green floral chest of drawers. Cassatt was inspired by Japanese woodblock prints at an art exhibition shortly before painting this canvas. Therefore, she is trying to capture the flat picture plane and shortened linear perspective of many 19th-century Japanese prints.

Sanctity of Motherhood

Child’s Bath is a genre scene. It is a domestic situation with little or no story. However, it has the impression of a holy scene, the iconic and centuries-old Christian theme of Madonna-and-Child paintings. The Virgin Mary holds the baby Jesus in hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of paintings around the world. These images of the holy mother evoke the sanctity of motherhood and the cult of motherhood.

Cassatt’s painting evokes this sanctity of motherhood. The mother is essential to the child’s well-being by giving the child a bath to ensure the child remains clean and healthy. The emotional bond is further felt by the mother’s left cheek brushing against the child’s right shoulder. There is a domestic intimacy, easily felt in the image, that any loving mother expresses towards her child. Cassatt’s genius lies in her ability to capture such details to evoke such feelings and emotions.

Collective Memory

Cassatt was appreciated during her lifetime and thankfully continues to receive appreciation in today’s world. She inspires in the viewer a charming delicacy and a sentimentality not frequently found in other Impressionists. While her subjects could seem mundane or too normal for some modern viewers, it must be remembered that Cassatt elevated the everyday domestic scene into something worthy of attention and worthy of capturing on canvas. Countless babies have had countless baths over the centuries, but this bath, this Child’s Bath, has become an icon of art featuring children.

Modern life is filled with special moments, but the ones captured in a photograph are the ones more easily remembered and cherished. Cassatt does the same but with oil on canvas. An ordinary moment is captured and elevated into the cultural status of a collective memory.