Angels And Tomboys

In the aftermath of the Civil War, the American girl seemed transformed - at once more introspective and adventurous than her counterpart of the previous generation. For the first time, girls claimed the attention of genre artists, and though the culture still prized the demure female child of the past, complementary images of angel and tomboy emerged as competing visions of this new generation. Published in conjunction with a travelling exhibition organised by the Newark Museum, Angels and Tomboys explores the diverse ways nineteenth-century artists portrayed girls, from thesentimental stereotype to the free-spirited individual. Works by John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, and Thomas Eakins, together with those by leading women artists such as Cecilia Beaux and Mary Cassatt, reveal a new, provocative psychological element not found in early Victorian portraiture, while the mischievous tomboys in Lilly Martin Spencer's paintings and the pure angels in the works of John George Brown underscore the complexity of young girlhood - and of representing that evanescent phase. Essays by Holly Pyne Connor, Barbara Dayer Gallati, Sarah Burns, and Lauren Lessing consider the artworks' historical, social, and literary contexts, drawing on sources as varied as etiquette books, poems, censuses, and histories of medicine and economics. With more than 130 illustrations - including paintings, sculptures, prints, and photographs - this book is an illuminatingview of what it meant to be young, female, and American in the nineteenth century.