Mary Cassatt: The Boating Party and The Bath

Mary Cassatt grew up in Pennsylvania and made her career in Paris. In 1879 Edgar Degas invited her to show with the Impressionists. She painted the modern life around her: women at the theater, women and children at home, and, in the canvas below, an afternoon on the water.

The Boating Party

The Boating Party is an oil painting from the winter of 1893–94, made while Cassatt was staying at Antibes. It is at the National Gallery of Art. You are close to the boat, looking slightly down into it. A man in a dark blue jacket and cap sits with his back to us and pulls the oar. Across from him, a woman in a pale hat holds a baby. Behind them is open water, a low shore with a few light buildings, and a dark band of sky. The boat is cut by the frame, and the three figures fill what is left.

The Bath

The Bath, from 1890–91, is a color print, made with drypoint, softground etching, and aquatint. In the spring of 1890 Cassatt saw a large exhibition of Japanese woodblock prints in Paris. Over the next year she made a set of ten color prints, and The Bath is one of them. The view is from above. A woman in a yellow-green dress, dotted with a few small blue marks, holds a naked child beside a basin. The floor rises toward a plain wall. The National Gallery of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago each own an impression.

Using the photographs

Cassatt died in 1926, so both works are in the public domain. What you download is the museum’s photograph of the canvas or the sheet it owns. You can use either one for a personal project or a commercial one.