The Toilette

A pale back curves over a basin, while a mirror offers a small additional view of the lowered head. Below, pink, green and white stripes descend through a long skirt towards a blue patterned carpet. A tan washstand gives the left side a large, firm shape; a separate jug interrupts the floor in front. Cassatt builds the scene from a body, its reflection and a densely organised set of domestic surfaces.

The design is known as Woman Bathing (La Toilette) and dates to 1890–91. The Met’s impression, accession 16.2.2, is drypoint and aquatint printed in colour from three plates, fourth and final state. The museum credits its printing jointly to Cassatt and Monsieur LeRoy. Those particulars identify the named Met sheet, rather than every surviving impression of the image. ^[1]

The French title refers here to personal washing and grooming. It does not name the child-bathing composition often called The Bath, or the separate woman arranging her hair in The Coiffure. The bent back, striped skirt and enclosing washstand make this particular design recognisable.

A back described through a long curve

The upper body occupies a large pale area near the centre-right. Its outer contour moves from the lowered head around the shoulder and down towards the waist. The back is not modelled through a continuous succession of deep shadows, so the boundary carries much of its information.

A bent arm returns towards the basin. Its narrower shape gives another direction within the larger body, making the action comprehensible without showing an unobstructed view of the hands. The torso leans forward, but the lower body remains more upright beneath it.

This change of direction is crucial. The back forms a broad arc above the skirt’s descending stripes, so the image contains both a bend and a vertical continuation. The pose would have a different weight if the entire figure simply followed one uninterrupted diagonal.

The pale torso also contrasts with the darker turquoise field behind it. The boundary is readable because adjoining regions differ in colour and density. Cassatt can make the body substantial through contour and placement while leaving its interior relatively restrained.

The small reflected head

The mirror introduces another view near the top of the washstand. We see part of the head reflected at the left while the actual head remains lowered and turned away. The reflection adds information without converting the figure into a conventional frontal portrait.

Its small scale within the composition matters. The broad back is immediately apparent, while the reflected features require a closer look. The mirror thus changes the order in which the viewer encounters the figure: body and action first, a partial view of the face later.

The mirror frame provides firm vertical boundaries around that smaller image. Its warm edges divide the turquoise surround, creating a geometric structure beside the softer curvature of head and shoulder. A narrow reflected region can therefore have a substantial role in the overall design.

The reflection does not reveal a private thought or establish that the woman was consciously posing for a spectator. Its strongest contribution is spatial and visual. It lets the image offer more than one aspect of a person while retaining the dominance of a turned back.

The basin and the leaning arm

The basin sits on the pale washstand top close to the centre. Its oval rim adds a curve smaller than the body’s outline and more regular than the patterned fabric below. The leaning arm brings the figure into direct relation with it.

The top surface appears at an angle, so its edges lead back towards the mirror and wall. The basin is placed within that bounded area rather than floating in an unspecified field. A few clearly drawn divisions are enough to give the furniture a convincing upper plane.

Small bottles or containers stand beside the basin, adding narrow vertical accents. Their modest scale makes the body and large cabinet appear more substantial by comparison. They also interrupt the pale top without turning it into a crowded still life.

The exact sequence of washing is not fully narrated. The image gives a person bending towards a basin, with the face mostly withheld and the hands partly obscured. It can remain a specific action without an invented account of preparations, products or a moment before and after.

The washstand’s tan planes

The cabinet fills much of the left-hand middle area. Its broad tan side and front are divided by comparatively straight lines, contrasting with the curved back and basin. The furniture gives the composition one of its strongest sets of enclosed shapes.

The top recedes at an angle, while the lower panels establish a more upright front. These changes make the cabinet readable as an object with volume. At the same time, the large areas remain visually simple enough to participate in the print’s broader pattern of bounded colour.

The figure overlaps the cabinet at the right. Skirt and torso interrupt furniture edges, making the person seem close to the washstand rather than placed separately beside it. The meeting of body and cabinet also gives the centre a series of interlocking contours.

The room is not described from an evenly centred architectural viewpoint. Cabinet, mirror, figure and floor compete for attention through their different directions. The image offers enough spatial information to recognise the setting while retaining a strong arrangement across the paper’s surface.

Stripes following the skirt

The skirt spreads down through pink, green and pale stripes. They do not all remain parallel straight bands. Their directions change around folds, bends and the tied fabric at the waist, linking the pattern to the body beneath it.

Near the upper skirt, the stripes turn more sharply around the hips. Lower down, they lengthen and descend towards the hem. This gives the covered body a different kind of description from the back: pattern carries volume and movement where the bare torso depends more on contour.

The alternating colours also create a substantial rhythm through the lower half. Light bands keep the fabric open in appearance, while green and pink establish repeated divisions. Their density makes the pale upper body seem quieter by comparison.

At the right, the garment approaches the edge and overlaps the floor pattern. Its long stripes remain distinct from the smaller scattered forms in the carpet. Two different patterned surfaces meet without becoming one undifferentiated decorative field.

A blue carpet and a separate jug

The floor is a broad blue region interrupted by pale floral and leaf-like shapes. Its pattern differs from the skirt’s regular alternation of colours. It introduces smaller, more irregular forms beneath the large figure and cabinet.

A pale jug stands in the foreground to the left of the skirt. Its curved handle and wider body make it immediately recognisable against the blue. A warm red motif on its surface supplies another colour accent near the bottom of the composition.

The jug is separate from the basin above, giving washing equipment two distinct positions within the room. Its presence also brings the viewer’s attention down towards the floor, rather than allowing all interest to remain around the torso and mirror.

The carpet’s visible fragments continue around furniture and feet. Those interruptions help make the floor seem to extend underneath the objects. At the same time, its conspicuous colour and pattern give it an independent presence within the design.

Line, colour and the print surface

The image combines fine contours with broader coloured areas. The back’s edge, cabinet divisions and skirt folds can be followed as lines, while wall, furniture and floor establish larger fields. These two kinds of description cooperate rather than requiring every form to be built through heavy shadow.

Drypoint involves drawing directly into a plate with a pointed tool; aquatint provides a way to create tonal areas through an etched surface. The National Gallery’s account of Cassatt’s practice distinguishes these resources within her broader printmaking work. It also describes the challenge of printing several differently inked plates in alignment. ^[15]

The Met’s three-plate description belongs specifically to its final-state Woman Bathing. It should not be read as a count of three successive pictures, three colours only or three stages in the artist’s career. Plates and states describe different aspects of making a print. ^[1]

A plate is a physical printing surface. A state is a version of that surface or set of surfaces after a change. Several impressions can be pulled from one state, and those separate sheets can have different subsequent histories. This distinction helps explain why the same design may appear in more than one museum.

The final state and what it does not show

The Met identifies its sheet as fourth state of four under the Mathews and Shapiro catalogue. That establishes its position in the documented state sequence. It does not make the final sheet a complete illustrated record of every earlier alteration. ^[1]

The finished image can still be considered closely on its own. The relation between a pale torso and patterned skirt, the small reflection and the large washstand remains available without a reconstruction of every trial proof. A state number should not substitute for actually looking at those earlier images.

Nor should a caption attach the Met’s accession to any reproduction that happens to show the same woman. The design may match while paper, margins, inscriptions or printing differences belong to another sheet. Object identification needs more detail than the image’s central composition alone.

The distinction is especially useful for a colour print. Variations of inking and support can affect an impression’s appearance without necessarily creating a newly altered state. Recognising those possibilities is different from claiming a particular unexamined sheet has faded, changed or been restored.

Plate size, sheet size and a separate Amsterdam impression

For accession 16.2.2, the Met records a plate measuring 36.4 × 26.8 centimetres and a sheet measuring 43.2 × 29.8 centimetres. The greater sheet size includes paper beyond the printed plate area. These figures should remain attached to that impression. ^[1]

The margins have a different role from the depicted room. They can carry inscriptions and provide physical space around the image, while the plate area contains the composition. A reproduction cropped to the image may omit that information without changing the design it represents.

The Van Gogh Museum’s 2021 annual report records another Woman Bathing, accession p3057S2021, on thick laid paper. It appears among that year’s acquisitions and is distinct from the Met’s Paul J. Sachs gift of 1916. ^{[16] [1]}

The report also includes the Amsterdam accession in a list of treated works. The listing establishes that institutional activity, but supplies no object-specific cleaning, repair or colour-change result. Its presence in a treatment list cannot explain the appearance of another museum’s sheet. ^[16]

The Set of Ten and collaborative printing

The Met places Woman Bathing among the ten colour prints Cassatt exhibited at Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris in 1891. The National Gallery relates the project to her encounter with the major Paris exhibition of Japanese prints in 1890. ^{[1] [15]}

The connection concerns a sustained experiment with colour, line and everyday subjects. These prints use intaglio methods even where their broad areas and pattern invite comparison with Japanese woodcuts. Visual admiration did not require an identical printing process.

The joint printer credit also matters. Cassatt’s authorship of the design coexists with LeRoy’s participation in producing the impressions. The National Gallery describes their work together in the studio as part of the technical effort behind the series. ^[15]

That context adds substance to what might otherwise seem an effortlessly spare image. Clear contours and apparently simple coloured areas depended on the coordination of drawing, plate work, inking and printing. Simplicity in the final design should not be confused with an absence of technical decisions.

What can be said about the Degas remark?

The Met associates a reported remark by Degas with the linear quality of this nude’s back. Its account presents him as expressing admiration in language that denied a woman’s capacity to draw with such ability. The statement is reported speech, not a comment by Cassatt about herself. ^[1]

Louisine Havemeyer’s printed remarks of 6 April 1915 contain the gendered exclamation, but identify its occasion only as Degas standing before one of Cassatt’s pictures. That passage does not name Woman Bathing. The precise association with this design therefore belongs to the later museum account rather than being independently specified by the speech. ^[17]

This limit does not prevent discussion of the back’s drawing. Its long curve, the return of the arm and the narrow transition to the waist are visible relationships. They can be examined without making the anecdote certify a particular sitting or an exact response to this physical impression.

The reported admiration also carries a judgement about gender that should remain the speaker’s. It is evidence of a way Cassatt’s skill was discussed, rather than a principle the image asks us to accept. Her command of the composition can be considered through the work itself.

The Coiffure and a fuller reflection

The Coiffure is another design of 1890–91. The Met’s impression, 16.2.3, is printed from three plates and catalogued as fifth and final state. A seated woman raises her arms to arrange her hair before a much larger reflected view. ^[18]

The arms create an enclosing upper shape around the bowed head. In the mirror, more of the face and upper body becomes visible, so reflection supplies a fuller counterpart to the turned back. The striped chair and patterned room make another set of adjoining decorative surfaces.

In Woman Bathing, the torso bends towards the basin and the reflected head remains much smaller. The standing figure’s long skirt establishes a stronger downward continuation, while the cabinet occupies a large part of the left-hand area. The two prints use mirrors to distribute information differently.

Their similarities do not identify the same model or room. Nor should the three plates and state sequence of one become a universal technical description for all Cassatt’s toilette scenes. Each design has its own documented development and surviving sheets.

The Bath: a child and a testing hand

The colour print The Bath places an adult and child beside a tub, rather than showing a lone adult at a washstand. The Met’s 16.2.7 is a two-plate impression, seventeenth and final state, dated 1890–91. ^[19]

The adult supports the child while extending a hand into the water. A yellow patterned garment makes the largest coloured figure shape, and a comparatively open surrounding field gives the group room. The tub supplies a strong curved boundary at the left.

Here, the cabinet and mirror enclose the solitary figure more firmly. The action bends forward into a basin, while the striped skirt and blue carpet fill much of the lower space. The relation is between a person and washing furniture, rather than the additional task of holding a child.

The two-plate count belongs to that named Bath impression, while the final Met Woman Bathing uses three. The titles should also remain distinct from Cassatt’s later oil The Child’s Bath. A bathing subject can recur across different designs and media without making the works interchangeable.

Looking at a routine without inventing a biography

The print makes bodily action particular while leaving much of the model’s identity unknown. A bent torso, lowered head and skirt tied at the waist tell us how the person is arranged. They do not supply an occupation, a named household or an exact personal ritual.

The absence of a full outward face changes the encounter, but does not itself establish embarrassment or a desire to hide. The mirror offers a small reflected view because that is how the composition is organised. Psychological interpretation should remain proportionate to what the image provides.

Its lasting interest lies in the coordination of unequal elements: a quiet pale back, a small reflection, a solid cabinet and two strongly patterned surfaces. Following those relationships makes a routine act of washing into a demanding piece of visual organisation, whether one begins with the figure or with the printed surface around it.