Mark Beard (American b.1956) Newport Oil on canvas Signed 'Bruce Sargeant' upper left 112 x 169cm (44 x 66½ in.) New York based artist Mark Beard uses different artistic personas, all of whom are linked to each in a fiction created by the artist. Bruce Sargeant (1898-1938) is an imagined English artist, a spoof on John Singer Sargent who was taught by French painter, Hippolyte-Alexandre Michallon, another of Beard's creations.