In the spring of 1890, Mary Cassatt attended a large exhibition of Japanese color woodcut prints (ukiyo-e) at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She so admired the subjects, compositions, and colors that she set to work on a series of prints that emulated what she had seen. Using aquatint, drypoint, etching, and hand-coloring, she attempted to capture the flat planes and simple lines of Japanese woodcuts. The Bath was Cassatt’s first effort in the series and the one which, according to her, most fully imitated Japanese design. She was so fully engaged in the process that she produced seventeen different states (iterations) of The Bath before she considered it finished. The subject, a mother and child, was a favorite of Cassatt’s, and in the series as a whole, she opened a window on women’s private lives in the late nineteenth century.