He works on the Library murals with Edwin Austin Abbey and here paints his studio Cottage at Fairford, Gloucestershire where they are living and working. He travels back to London for periodic portrait sittings. He paints Miss Helena Dunham a friend of Vernon Lee and a New York acquaintance.

At the New English Art Club, London, Sargent exhibits Paul Helleu Sketching with his Wife (1889). Although the NEAC had a strong representation of French trained and influenced Impressionist painters, frustratingly again the painting gets little public attention and reaction. It had gotten a cold shoulder in America when he showed it in 1890, and his try at Impressionism had gotten no response when exhibited with Monet and other Impressionists at the Galerie Georges-Petit, Paris in 1885.

This was strike three for Sargent, and his experimentation with Impressionism for public exhibition comes to a close. He would not show another Impressionist work, and the beauties and ideas of Impressionism begin to blossom in his watercolors which he paints for his own pleasure. 

He travels to Spain to visit his mother and sister Violet.

In the winter he travels to Tunis.
 

Winters in Tunis.

His success and popularity in the United States starts to bring in portrait commissions in Europe.

May brings exhibition season. He finishes then exhibits Lady Agnew at the Royal Academy and shows Mrs. Hugh Hammersley at the New Gallery, London. Both receive resounding applause. Finally, England has come around. Sargent is becoming a force in the art world on both sides of the pond.

He exhibits eight portraits and A Study of Egyptian Girl (1891) at the  World Columbian Exposition, Chicago, and shows at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

(See the World Columbian Exposition, Chicago)