Mary Cassatt The Bath, 1892 Oil on Canvas, 39 x 26" The Art Institute of Chicago Mary Cassatt's masterpiece, The Bath, is a profound representation of a very tender and intimate moment shared between a mother and child; of nurturing care and innocent trust. Romanticizing maternity with purity and honesty, the artist depicts the mother engaged in the act of bathing her child in a white, purple rimmed basin. The two are seated on the floor with the child held in the lap of her mother. The picture's elevated vantage point pitches forward the planes, allowing the viewer to observe,...
the viewer in a state of complete absorption. The child's downcast gaze conveys a sense intense curiosity and wonder as she watches her mother's hand. The pair's heads meet, reinforcing the sense of absorption; their hair together, the mother's forehead touches that of the child and her chin touches her daughter's shoulder. Rather than glance at each other, they gaze in the same direction, looking together at their paired reflection in the basin of water and the child's small foot. Enveloped in a moment of mutual absorption, they appear to the viewer to exist as a single entity Getlein.