March 29 – May 12, 2012

ClampArt is pleased to announce the opening of “Master and Apprentice: Hippolyte-Alexandre Michallon (1849-1930) and Bruce Sargeant (1898-1938).” The exhibition is curated by New York artist, Mark Beard, who is Bruce Sargeant’s great nephew.

Mark Beard has devoted the last two decades of his life to researching and collecting the work of Bruce Sargeant, a painter who largely concentrated on the idealization and celebration of the male form. Had Sargeant not met with a tragic and untimely death at the age of 40, he may have gone on to achieve the fame and renown awarded to such painters as James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Eakins, and Winslow Homer—artists to whom his style is often compared. Instead, Sargeant’s oeuvre has remained relatively unknown for years, and only recently brought to light thanks to the efforts of Beard.

ClampArt’s exhibition will also include works by Sargeant’s revered teacher, Hippolyte-Alexandre Michallon. Originally from France, Michallon taught at the Slade School of Art in London for two decades. His outstanding technical skills easily won him a faculty position in 1900. However, his academic approach to painting and his reluctance to embrace the tide of modernism resulted in the dwindling of his following. In fact, by 1922, Sargeant was Michallon’s only pupil. Michallon retired from the Slade and convinced his student to study with him privately at home. Sargeant remained fiercely loyal to his master to the end of his life, and he designed and executed the bronze memorial plaque which remains on display in the tiny chapel in St. Ethylburga-by-the-Sea, where Michallon rests in the churchyard.

Mark Beard (1956-) was born and raised in Salt Lake City. His portraits, nudes, bronzes, and handcrafted books have been exhibited worldwide, and he has also designed more than twenty theatrical sets in New York, London, and Germany. His works are in numerous museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut; and the Princeton, Harvard, and Yale University Museums, among many others.