Girl Power

Look at one of the female protagonists in a painting by Mary Cassatt, and it isn’t likely she’ll look back at you.

The American-born, Parisbased artist often painted her subject peering away from viewers, living in her own world, independent and brave.

Or take the works of Lilly Martin Spencer. While her husband worked primarily on the domestic side of their household’s affairs, Spencer painted to support her family.

Many of her subjects tackle domestic duties, but others have a more playful existence.

“There is a freedom in her work. There’s an idea that there is an independence and exuberance. And they tend to portray a very active picture of what it was to be a young girl,” says Kevin Murphy, curator of American art for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville.

Girls - sugar or spice - are the subject of the newest traveling exhibit at Crystal Bridges. Called “Angels & Tomboys: Girlhood in 19th Century American Art,” the collection, which originated at the Newark Museum in New Jersey, goes on display today for museum members and Saturday for the general public.

The collected works are loosely divided into the two groups that provide the exhibit’s name. The angels, like Abbott Handerson Thayer’s “Angel,” look saintly. The tomboys, such the one in J.G.

Brown’s “Swinging on the Gate,” have a hint of mischief in their eyes.

Spanning the whole of the 19th century, the works gettheir own historical dividing line - the Civil War. Children became common subjects after the war, in large part because they were viewed as being unspoiled by the conflict and could remake the country,Murphy says.

Coupled with the need to rebuild was an effort to redefine societal roles, including those of women, and that was reflected on canvas.

Many of the pre-Civil War works feature boys and girls in similar clothing and with similar hairstyles, making them largely indistinguishable. Definition and independence followed the war.

“There is a realhopefulness,” Murphy says of the latter-day “Angels & Tomboys” works. “Girls are going to become the nurturers. Then that becomes contested.

Is it proper that they go to school, and maybe get a job?”

Perhaps those questions aren’t thoroughly resolved in the 72 paintings included in the collection. But the themes established by artists such as Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, Cecilia Beaux and dozens more, including a host ofprominent female artists, carried on. George Bellow and Robert Henri, to name two, featured many female subjects among their works.

The works of Norman Rockwell, shown at Crystal Bridges courtesy of a traveling exhibit whose departure made room for “Angels & Tomboys,” also adopted many of the themes outlined by the artists assembled in the collection, Murphy says.

“It depicted very similar kinds of things as in ‘Angels & Tomboys.’ And you see those same kind of broad themes run through them,” Murphy says.

Importantly, one is that same independent streak displayed by those in Cassatt’s work.

There was an awakening, and it showed.

“You tend to see more physically active subjects, and more mentally active subjects, if you will,” Murphy says.

The exhibit will remain on show at Crystal Bridges through Sept. 30.