The Bath

Mary Cassatt

National Gallery of Art

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 skin of both the woman and baby are the white of the paper. Their facial features and bodies are outlined with light brown, and their hair drawn in with faint black lines. 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 is a flat area of straw yellow. 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. The tub and the corner where the floor meets the wall are drawn in with brown lines. There are some smudges across the paper, especially at the edges. The artist wrote her initials in graphite under the lower left corner, “MC.”