Woman Bathing
1890–91
Medium
Color aquatint and drypoint on off-white laid paper
Dimensions
Image/plate: 36.4 × 26.9 cm (14 3/8 × 10 5/8 in.); Sheet: 43.2 × 30.5 cm (17 1/16 × 12 1/16 in.)
Classification
drypoint
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
13506
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Mary Cassatt began a series of color prints in 1890 that demonstrate her close study of Japanese color woodblock prints. In Woman Bathing, Cassatt combined an intimate scene from daily life with dynamic formal elements—color, composition, pattern, and shape—inspired by similar choices in work by Japanese printmakers such as Utagawa Hiroshige. Here a woman stands over a wash basin, while the mirror catches part of her reflection. The multiple patterns—the green and pink stripes in her gown, the y...
About the Artist
Mary Cassatt · 1844–1926
Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) was an American painter and printmaker who became the only American artist to exhibit with the French Impressionists. Born to a wealthy Pennsylvania family, she defied social conventions to pursue art professionally, settling permanently in Paris where Edgar Degas invited her to join the Impressionist group in 1877. Her paintings of mothers and children—rendered with Impre...