Two Seated Arabs, Palestine

1887–1888

His first solo exhibition in Boston

In Boston Sargent is honoured with his first solo exhibition, which presents 22 of his paintings; there he becomes friends with the painter Dennis Miller Bunker.

1887–1888

His first professional trip to New York and Boston

His first trip to New York and Boston as a professional artist produces over twenty important commissions, among them portraits of the Boston art patron Isabella Stewart Gardner and of Mrs. Adrian Iselin, wife of a New York businessman.

1895–1919

The “Triumph of Religion” murals for the Boston Public Library

From 1895 through 1919, for almost thirty years, Sargent works on his largest-scale work, the mural decorations “Triumph of Religion” for the Boston Public Library, showing religion's progress from pagan superstition to the ascension of Christianity; he never completes the final mural of the cycle.

1898

Asher Wertheimer commissions a dozen family portraits

In 1898 Asher Wertheimer, a wealthy Jewish art dealer living in London, commissions from Sargent a series of a dozen portraits of his family, the artist's largest commission from a single patron; most of them, bequeathed to the National Gallery, are now on display at Tate Britain.

1905

His first major solo show of watercolours

In 1905 the Carfax Gallery in London holds Sargent's first major solo exhibition of watercolour works; in watercolours he is able to indulge his earliest artistic inclinations for nature, architecture, exotic peoples and noble mountain landscapes.

1907

Closes his portrait studio

In 1907, at the age of fifty-one, Sargent officially closes his studio, relieved: painting a portrait, he says, would be quite amusing if one were not forced to talk while working, entertaining the sitter and looking happy when one feels wretched.