The year begins with the  portrait of Mrs. Henry White, the wife of an American diplomat in Paris. In February, Sargent visits his parents and sisters in Nice. On the 10th he writes to Vernon Lee: "In a few days I shall be back in Paris, tackling my other 'envoi,' the Portrait of a Great Beauty [Virginie Avegno Gautreau] . . ."

Sometime during the year he does a number of  studies in anticipation of the final oil. This sittings are not going well. This was all uncommissioned and done in anticipation of a critical exhibition of his work at the Paris Salon. 

April: at the Society of American Artists, New York, he exhibits Lady with the Rose (Charlotte Louise Burckhardt 1882).

On the 30th, Edouard Manet, the father of modern art, dies of complications to syphilis at the age of 51.

In May, at the Salon, he exhibits Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882).

June: He moves to a new studio at 41 boulevard Berthier. Vernon Lee visits Sargent's studio on the 23rd and she writes to her mother.

In the summer he visits the Gautreau estate in Brittany to continue the painting of Mme. Gautreau. 

(see Photo of Sargent painting dated 1883)

July: on the 14th he returns to Paris, then makes a short trip to the Netherlands with Paul Helleu and Albert Belleroche. (possibly made the trip in '82).

Berthe Moriscot attempts to enlist his support for the Impressionist movement.

About this time, Giovanni Boldini paints a portrait of Sargent. 

August: he returns to the Gautreau estate (Les Chenes, Parame, Brittany) where, in some frustration, he writes again to Vernon Lee: "Your letter has just reached me still in this country house struggling with the unpaintable beauty and hopeless laziness of Madame Gaureau."  John  stays through September. 

By October he travels to Italy: Florence, Siena and Possibly Rome, then returns to Paris with a half finished portrait of Mme. Gautreau.

He's on friendly terms during this period with Edgar Degas, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, and particularly Claude Monet.
See footnote 1

The art world is brought together for a Manet retrospective at the Ecole Nationale des, Paris, January 6th thru the 28th.

On the 4th and 5th of February, a sale of Manet's work is held at the Hotel Drouot, Paris. Sargent buys an oil study of Le Balcon (consisting of a portrait of Fanny Claus) for 580 francs and a watercolor of irises. Sometime during this month he gets commissioned to paint The Misses Vickers in Sheffield, England.  Also in February he's invited to exhibit at the inaugural exhibition of the Sosciété des Vingts (LesXX) in Brussels along with twenty very select arists: Rodin, Whistler, Liebermann, and William Merrit Chase, among others.

Sargent meets Henry James who talks him into going to England early to visit, writes to Vernon Lee about Henry James and The Misses Vickers commission, then packs and leaves.

March: Sargent arrives in London on the 27th. The following day he visits the exhibition of Sir Joshua Reynolds' (1723-1792) work at the Grosvenor Gallery with Henry James.

James takes Sargent to the studios of several Important English artists on the 29th: among them Frederic Leighton (1830-1896) and John Everett Millais (1829-1896). That night James gives a dinner at the Reform Club and Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-1898) is among the guests.

April 3rd: still in England, James and Sargent are guests at a party given by an expatriate American painter Edwin Austin Abbey, and Alfred Parsons (Abbey would prove to be another critical friend).

May: At the Royal Academy, London, he submits Mrs. Henry White (1883) which he painted in Paris but they since moved to London, and at a party given by Mrs. White,  Sargent's eventual biographer and friend, Evan Charteris, first meets John. Was it a party celebrating her portrait on display? Quite possibly (Sometime during this year Mrs. White husband  had been appointed First Secretary to the American Embassy, London from his position in Paris France).

At the Grosvenor Gallery, London, he shows Mrs. Thomas Legh (n/a). 

For the Paris Salon he finally finished the Gautreau portrait (Madame X)  and submitted it as his only painting.  He arrives in Paris on the eve of the Salon's public opening nervous. His friend Ralph Curtis is with him.

Scandal erupts.

Among others, Sargent visits the Boits (Daughters of Edward Darley Boit 1882) for emotional support. Curtis laments in a letter to his family whom Sargent had painted in 1882.

After the exhibit he takes the  portrait back to his studio and from then on its referred to it as Madame X.

Emotionally burnt out and with a bitter taste in his mouth for all things Parisian, he writes to his friend Henry James longing for London and happier times: "I am dreadfully tired of the people here and of my present work, a certain majestic portrait of an ugly woman [Mrs. Kate Moore]. She is like a great frigate under full sail with homeward-bound steamers flying" (Olson, p.109)

On the 25th of May, he leases Besnard's studio in Kensington with anticipation of work in England. 

June: 7th, Sargent gives a lunch in Paris attended by Paul Bourget, Oscar Wilde and his new wife.



By the 10th he happily wipes the dust of Paris from his shoes and finally  arrives in England, taking residence at Bailey's Hotel.

Sargent and Edwin Abbey host a joint tea party at which Vernon Lee sees Lady Playfair unfinished on an easel in his studio.

July: he visits Mr. and Mrs. Albert Vickers in Sussex, England. 

Then on to another branch  of the Vickers family at Sheffield, to paint The Misses Vickers, daughters of  of Colonel Thomas Vickers, whom he had been commissioned to paint prior to the Salon Paris.


October: goes to Petworth and then back to Sussex with Albert Vickers where he paints  several informal studies, two of which is  Garden Study of the Vickers Children and The Dinner Table.

November, he paints his friend Robert Louis Stevenson (n/a -- the first of three and this has been destroyed), at Bournemouth, then returns to Paris after Christmas.

In Paris he does not socialize outside other painters and his closest friends: Monet, the Burckhardts, the Boits, William Dana, Julian Story, Miss Alma Strettell,  and spends time at the Louvre studying Rubens and the Primitives.