Cosmopolitan portraitist of the gilded age, born to American parents in Florence and trained in Paris. After the Madame X scandal of 1884 effectively closed Paris society to him, Sargent rebuilt his career in London and Boston, becoming the most sought-after portraitist of his generation on both sides of the Atlantic. He grew tired of formal commissions in his fifties and turned to watercolor, traveling endlessly through the Alps, Venice and the Middle East to paint for himself.