Photo of the Day

The Child's Bath

Tuesday 29 September 2026

Painting of a woman in a striped dress holding a small child on her lap and washing the child's feet in a white basin, a flowered jug beside them — Oil painting · 1893

Mary Cassatt's 1893 painting of a woman washing a child's feet, seen from above as if we were standing over them. Cassatt, an American who spent her career in Paris, was the only American invited to exhibit with the Impressionists.

Fun facts

The high viewpoint and flat patterns were borrowed from Japanese woodblock prints, which Cassatt collected after a big exhibition in Paris in 1890. source ↗
She was a close friend of Edgar Degas, who invited her to join the Impressionists in 1877. source ↗
Cassatt never married and had no children, yet mothers and children became her main subject. source ↗
The painting is in the Art Institute of Chicago, which bought it in 1910. source ↗

Image: Mary Cassatt · Art Institute of Chicago
Licence: Public domain
Source: Wikimedia Commons Art Institute of Chicago