The Bath

From the Minneapolis Institute of Art record

Cassatt’s images of mothers and children transcend time. She recognized that the daily routines of caring for children, such as bathing, cuddling, and playing games, were subjects worthy of artistic expression. Cassatt made a radical turn in her printmaking after attending an exhibition of nearly eight hundred Japanese prints in Paris in 1890. She developed her own technique for producing the qualities she admired in Japanese woodcuts—the broad passages of color, the simple black outlines, and the use of patterns. Combining aquatint with drypoint she was able to imitate the woodcut technique. She applied a number of colors to each printing plate, so that each impression is slightly different. The Bath is among her most original and technically innovative prints. She reworked the image many times, adding areas of tone and subtracting lines. She created 16 different states, or versions, of this print before arriving at the final state, of which she printed just 25 impressions. United States, Americas