Social History: Contemporary portrait artist Juan Bastos carries on the tradition of John Singer Sargent.
“A number of Juan Bastos’ portraits remind me of [John Singer] Sargent.”
Gore Vidal
YouTube video on the Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (originally titled Portraits d’enfants). A painting by John Singer Sargent.
(Left: Gore Vidal’s painting by Juan Bastos)
Juan Bastos has the unique quality of John Singer Sargent in his captivating society portraits of children and adults.
Many of Bastos’ paintings conjure up an earlier epoch, a more gracious and leisurely age, when people embarked on grand tours, collecting bibelots along the way and having their likenesses rendered by the leading painters of the day.
Portraiture is on the rise.
The sophistication and formality of earlier masters has lately cropped up in the works of leading contemporary portrait painters such as Bastos.
