A study of the celebrated american painter John Singer Sargent explores his public practice as a society portrait painter and thee personal and complex aspects of his own creative drive. Additional essays by the author include: Citizens and Kings, Collecting Contemporary Art, Halfway There With Delacroix and Daumier. Contemporary descriptions of his portraits, often from people who knew the sitters, are at least as often unfavourable as they are favourable, even when he was at the very height of his success. Perhaps this is the fate of all successful portrait painters. The artist often sees his subjects rather differently from the way they would like to be seen. Friends and acquaintances mal also have a different image stored away. So, too, professional commentators, if the subject of the portrait is well known. Two quotes from the artist himself sum up the situation perfectly: "A portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth." - "Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.