ln 1890, Cassatt saw an impressive exhibition of more than seven hundred Japanese prints at the École des Beaux-Arts. Though she was already fascinated by Japanes art and culture, the exhibition compelled her to recognize the prints' value in her own art. Almost immediately, Cassatt embarked on an ambitious project of color aquatints based on ukiyo-e models. Working intensely over several months in 1890 and 1891, Cassatt completed a set of ten color aquatints, including Woman Bathing. The print contains a number of Japanese-inspired devices, among them unusual viewpoints, flat areas of color, strong diagonals, flattening of forms, and emphasis on pattern and line. Though it is not clear that the subject of a woman shown going about an everyday activity is borrowed from the Japanese prints of courtesans and beauties, there is no doubt that Cassatt's palette was determined by those prints. The dusty blue, pink, umber, and green tones are identical to the subdued color schemes in the eighteenth-century prints of Kitagawa Utamaro, one of Cassatt's favored influences.