(Other fellow art students at this time)

March: he exhibits at the Society of American Artists, New York, and shows a version of  A Capri (1878) which sells to an American collector.

April: He exhibits for the first time at the National Academy of Design, New York, and shows Neapolitan Children Bathing. 

By May  he has painted a second version of Carolus Duran and submits it to the Paris Salon for his third showing. It is credited as a tribute to his teacher and a coming-out portrait for Sargent. He gets high praise and wins a Honorable Mention and is exempt from jury selection the following year. 

He begins to attend musical and literary salons in Paris. He paints Edouard Pailleron. 


He would have five commissioned portraits that year. Jeanne and Rene Keiffer, Robert de Civrieux, and Edouard and Madame Pailleron. In the summer he executes the portraits for the Keiffer's, and Civrieux. 


August: he travels to Ronjoux and the Savoy estate of the Paillerons and paints several portraits of the family most notably Madame Edouard Pailleron. Then on to visit his family at Aix-les-Bains

In  the fall he travels overland to Spain with two french artists: Charles-Edmond Daux and Eugene Bach. He researches Spanish music and  he copies works by Diego Velázquez  (1599-1660) in the Prado, Madrid in October. It was from his teacher, Carolus-Duran, that Sargent learned the impotents of Velazquez's work. 




Sargent is captivated by the people, the culture and the music of Spain; and it would be from this trip that he would paint Spanish Dance and later his wonderful El Jaleo (1882).