John continues his trip in the middle east when, on January 21, Mrs. Mary Newbold Singer Sargent (John's mother) dies in London. John is near Jerusalem when he hears about his mothers illness and death in a wire. He telegraphs begging they hold off the funeral until he can get back and  he spends days in agony waiting for a boat to arrive to return him. 

It is difficult to overestimate the influence John's mother had on him. It was Mrs. Sargent who encouraged John to get into painting. Being an avid watercolorist herself, she painted constantly and took John out with her sketching in the early days. It was Mrs. Sargent's rule, according to Mary Newbold Patterson Hale, that no matter how many sketches were started each day one had to be finished.

It was about the time of his mother's death that John decided to stop taking on any new portrait commissions. He declares it in a letter in 1907.  He had grown exceedingly tired of the constraints of portraiture, as much as weary of dealing with the stuffiness and expectations of the clients that hired him.
Footnote 2

May: he exhibits four portraits and his first landscape The Mountain of Moah at the Royal Academy.

Summer: John he goes to Purtud, Switzerland, Turin, Bologna, and by autumn he is in Venice with his sister Emily.

October: he's in Rome.