Signed and dated lower right: “Beard 2000”.

Noting that an artist’s success often comes from the notoriety of one distinct style, Mark Beard developed several different artistic personalities in order to work in various manner and media. Bruce Sargeant is Beard’s turn-of-the-century alter ego who painted muscular young men in engaged in sports and leisure. According to Sargeant’s fictional biography, his models were physically akin to the heroes of Classical Greece, and as such the artist himself was a painter of adolescent youth and beauty.