Mary Cassatt The Child's Bath Glossy Poster

The Child's Bath by Mary Cassatt, oil on canvas 1893, is a figurative painting of a mother holding her little girl in her lap, washing the feet of the child in a round, white washbasin bowl in a domestic interior. Cassatt constructs the picture from a high point of view with diagonal composition, creating a sense of dynamism in the manner of her mentor Degas, yet views the scene of calm tranquillity with elegant, rigourous drawing and form flattened somewhat in the manner of Japanese prints. The flattened patterns of rug and wallpaper play against the carefully modelled forms of the figures, with a range of tonal values from deep black to delicate pale grey and white. With painterly grace, Cassatt captures a fleeting moment in time in an unsentimentally realistic scene of timeless beauty.