The Child's Bath

Seen from a high, tilted vantage, a woman cradles a small child on her lap and gently washes its feet in a basin, the two heads bent close in quiet intimacy, the patterned wallpaper and rug pressing the scene flat. Mary Cassatt, the American Impressionist who made mothers and children her great subject, borrowed the high viewpoint and bold pattern from Japanese prints. Now in the Art Institute of Chicago, the Child's Bath is her masterpiece - a tender, unsentimental image of maternal care, the everyday ritual of bathing a child raised to quiet monumentality.