Mary Cassatt’s The Child’s Bath is an oil painting on canvas. It portrays a mother taking care of her child’s health; they are both looking in the same direction towards the child’s feet as the mother gently cleans them. Although Cassatt used bold brush strokes, her attention to light and use of bright colors are striking as she portrays the light hitting the child‘s pale skin and the rosy cheeks of both the mother and the child.
Wikipedia
Characteristics of Impressionistic paintings include: bold, visible brush strokes, an emphasis on the light-changing qualities on its subjects, and real life movement. Early Impressionists were the radicals of their time; they began to use visible, unblended brush strokes and included movement in their paintings from the everyday world. Some of the main Impressionists of this time period, other than Cassatt, included: Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, and Claude Monet.
This text gives us a little insight into the life of Mary Cassatt (1844-1926). She was an American who was born into a wealthy family and raised in Pittsburgh; also influenced by Renaissance art, she approached Impressionism from a woman’s perspective, mainly as a figure painter. As a female, she was often restricted as far as going places unattended where men could go. Her subject matter was attributed to these restrictions. Many of her themes included women reading, visiting, taking tea, and bathing an infant. The Child’s Bath is not only a picture about health, but about intense emotional and physical involvement.
This website talks about themes and symbolism in the painting. It tells about how Cassatt often depicted women caring for children and a mother’s intimacy with them; her paintings reflected the 19th Century ideas about raising children. She often portrays them being bathed, dressed, read to, and held by a mother figure. In this particular painting, due to the cholera epidemics, the new ideas about bathing and personal hygiene are depicted by the mother bathing her child.
The Child’s Bath currently resides at the Art Institute of Chicago. I was given the opportunity to see this painting by Mary Cassatt while at the Art Institute, and I recognized it immediately, after having previously seen many pictures of the piece. It is a meaningful work of art that embraces the natural love between a mother and a child.
