In 1890 the Ecole des Beaux-Arts held a large-scale exhibition of Japanese prints that strengthened Mary Cassatt's interest in printmaking. These works had become increasingly popular in Paris, but this was the first time so many Japanese prints had been gathered in one place at one time in France. The exhibition had a profound effect on the artist and inspired her to create a series of ten color aquatints. The Bath is the first print in the series and derives from a long series of related works of mothers and children.

Japanese art influenced not only Cassatt's choice of subject matter but also her technique and composition. Women bathing children is a theme commonly found in Japanese woodblock prints, and Cassatt has depicted a woman and child who are neither clearly European nor Asian. Clad in a light yellow dress with a delicate leaf print, the mother kneels down at a blue tub of water. She submerges her right hand in the water while, in her left arm, she holds her chubby baby upright. Cassatt renders the figures and tub as two-dimensional shapes, almost completely eliminating the traditional shading and tonal variations that create the illusion of depth in Western art.

Cassatt produced The Bath in seventeen editions; the National Museum of Women in the Arts owns a final impression. To create The Bath, Cassatt used one plate for the tonal area and another for drypoint lines. Cassatt applied color by hand to each of the plates, which were then successively impressed on paper. The procedure was complex and labor intensive, requiring a day of preparation just to ink and reprint the plates for each of the impressions.