In After the bath Fox depicted a comfortable middle-class subject, a woman at her toilette. Like Sickert, he was interested in using thick touches of colour to capture the effects of light and wanted to paint everyday subjects, showing people caught in action, participating in their daily activities. However, rather than portraying the darker side of life as Sickert did, Fox turned to a more joyous one. His nude, drying her leg with a towel after her bath, has a sense of immediacy and honesty.