The archive / Impressionism / The Child's Bath
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The Child's Bath
Mary Cassatt · 1844–1926
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3 variations + a matched story print, every standard frame ratio. 300 DPI · sRGB · personal-use license.
Museum-quality giclée on Hahnemühle German Etching — heavyweight 310gsm, acid-free, velvety matte. Made to order & shipped.
Sizes in the download
Ready-to-print files at every size below — each drops straight into a standard frame at 300 DPI, nothing cropped:
Each of these also prints big-wall at 150 DPI — up to about 36″ on the short side (so the 24×36″ becomes 36×54″), for a step-back view. Or print the borderless master, the full-resolution scan, sharp to about 18×24″.
THE WORK
An ordinary moment, seen from above.
We look down on the scene from a high vantage, the faces foreshortened as if glimpsed from above, the way a real onlooker might catch such an intimate moment. That looking-down viewpoint reflects the influence of Cassatt's friend and mentor Edgar Degas, her fellow Impressionist.
WHERE IT CAME FROM
Paris had just discovered the Japanese print.
Captivated by a large exhibition of Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints in Paris in 1890, Cassatt absorbed their bold patterns, strong outlines, and high, tilted-up perspective. Those qualities are the painting's most distinctive feature, lifted directly from her study of the Japanese prints.
LOOK CLOSER
Her name is written on the floor.
Cassatt signed the canvas not in a corner margin but down in the picture itself, on the depicted floor at the lower left. There, in blue paint, she wrote 'Mary Cassatt.'
Seriously, you must not miss that. You who want to make color prints you couldn't dream of anything more beautiful. I dream of it and don't think of anything else but color on copper.— Mary Cassatt, in a letter to Berthe Morisot, 1890
The file & the facts
- Title
- The Child's Bath
- Artist
- Mary Cassatt
- Year
- 1893
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Original
- 100.3 × 66.1 cm
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Rights
- Open access · personal use
- File
- 300 DPI · sRGB · JPEG
