Das Bad eines Kindes

In April 1880 Cassatt hung this in the fifth Impressionist exhibition in Paris, having been welcomed into the group by Degas, whose advice shows all through it. A woman bends to wash a drowsy child, the scene cropped tight at both sides the way Degas liked and the way Japanese prints had taught the Impressionists to compose. It is thought to be the first time Cassatt took up the mother-and-child subject that would occupy her for the rest of her career. An American from Pittsburgh who had settled in Paris, she was one of very few women, and the only American, invited to exhibit with the French Impressionists. The Los Angeles museum that holds it also lists it under a longer title, Mother About to Wash Her Sleepy Child.