John Singer Sargent

Never has an artist been more exalted or vilified throughout his career and afterwards. John Singer Sargent was best known for his remarkable portraits, mostly high-society commissions, which many of his critics hailed as mere "art applied to social requirement and social ambition." However, no one can deny the opulence with which he portrayed his wealthy patrons, nor the luminosity of his other subject matter, be it foreign landscapes, people or architecture.