Still Life, Daffodils

c. 1890

Elected to the Royal Academy

Sargent is elected an associate of the Royal Academy and is made a full member three years later.

1890s

Fourteen portrait commissions a year

In the 1890s Sargent averages fourteen portrait commissions per year, among them the genteel “Lady Agnew of Lochnaw” (1892) and the equally well received “Mrs. Hugh Hammersley” (1892); as a portrait painter in the grand manner he is referred to as “the Van Dyck of our times”.

1893

Nine portraits at the Chicago World's Fair

In 1893 Sargent exhibits nine of his portraits in the Palace of Fine Arts at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

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.