Anglo-American artist, son of a distinguished Boston physician, born at Florence, Italy, on the 12th of January 1856. He was educated in Italy and Germany, and in 1874 entered the atelier of Carolus-Duran in Paris. He received an “honourable mention” in the Salon of 1878 for his “En route pour la pêche,” and in 1881 a second-class medal for his “Portrait of a Young Lady” (made famous by Henry James’s appreciation). In 1886 his “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose,” exhibited at the Royal Academy, was bought for the Chantrey Bequest. He rapidly became known in London as a brilliant portrait painter, and year by year his Academy portraits were the leading features of its exhibitions. Though of the French school, and American by birth, it is as a British artist that he won fame by his vogue as the most sought-after portrait painter of the day, his sitters including the men and women of greatest distinction in the literary, artistic and social life of Europe and America. While best known, and consequently busily employed, as a portrait painter, he had at the same time a disposition towards other, and especially decorative work; his paintings of Brittany, Venice and Eastern scenes are less known, but his labour of love, the ornate decorations for the Boston public library (completed in 1903), “The Pageant of Religion,” shows the other side of his genius. Among his pictures in public galleries not already mentioned are “El Jaleo” (exhibited 1882), in the Boston Art Museum; “La Carmencita,” in the Luxembourg; “Coventry Patmore,” in the National Portrait Gallery, London; and “Henry Marquand” (1887), in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. He was elected an A.R.A. in 1894, and R.A. in 1897; he was the recipient of various medals of honour, and was made a member of the chief artistic societies of Europe and America.
Sargent exhibited in 1910 the open-air paintings “Albanian Olive Gatherers,” “Glacier Streams,” “A Garden at Corfu” and “Vespers.” In 1911 appeared “A Waterfall” and “The Loggia.” His portrait of Henry James was exhibited in 1914, and was one of the pictures damaged in that year by suffragette attacks. He contributed in 1915 a blank canvas to a Red Cross sale at Christie’s, which was secured by Sir Hugh Lane just before his death for £10,000. In December 1916 the third series of his mural decorations in the Boston Public Library was unveiled. This concluding series is entitled “The Theme of the Madonna.” The first series (1895) depicts “The Judaic Development”; the second (1903), “The Dogma of the Redemption.” The theme of the whole is “Judaism and Christianity.” In 1917 he was elected a trustee of the Tate Gallery. During the World War he made a number of paintings of scenes on the western front; and his large picture “Gassed” in the Royal Academy in 1919 attracted great attention. In November 1921 his decorations in the rotunda of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts were unveiled.
