February: he donates Autumn on the River to the South African Relief Fund for sale at auction at Christie’s London.

Claude Monet is in London and paints his House of Parliament series. Mary Hunter, (mother of The Misses Hunter) and Sargent play host during his stay.

May: at the Royal Academy he shows An Interior in Venice (1898), The Earl of Dalhousie and the Wyndham Sisters (1899).

Paris again holds another Exposition Universal. This time around, the U.S. State Department gets involved and mounts an ambitious display for the American section to demonstrate the country's growing importance in the world. For the arts, a very deliberate selection of painters are chosen to show the country's best:  William Merritt Chase, Thomas Eakins, George Inness, Henry Ward Range, Theodore Robinson, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Winslow Homer, Louis Comfort Tiffany, James McNeill Whistler, and John Singer Sargent are among the prominent names.

Sargent sends Mrs. Carl Meyer and her Children (1896) and wins a Medal of Honor. As a whole, the Americans garner more awards than any other nation except the French and critics proclaim the American section to be the "Ecole Américaine."

Portrait commissions come pouring in for Sargent. He needs more space. In August he enlarges his studio by leasing the house next door (31 Tite Street), he knocks a passageway through the wall, and uses the new house as his main entrance.

September: he travels to Switzerland and then Italy – Genoa, Milan, Bologna, and Florence. 

Max Beerbohm's caricature of Sargent appears in the Christmas Supplement of the British magazine The World.
 

January, 22, Queen Victoria dies. John is in Fairford.

Sometimes in January - February, Claude Monet is back in London for an exhibition of nine of his paintings at the Hanover Gallery which was running a show on Impressionists, which included Monet. John attends the show with him.

May: he declines a commission to paint the coronation of King Edward VII. Feeling very uneasy about it, he writes: “The fact of my entire dependence on nature, both for likeness and qualities of painting, makes me particularly unfit for this high task.”  His friend Edwin Austin Abbey does the painting.

He exhibits the Crucifixion (1899) at the Royal Academy and he sends paintings to the Pan-American Exhibition, in Buffalo, New York.




August - September: he travels to Norway for salmon fishing with George McCulloch and his son Alexander (a schoolboy of 14). There he paints both the father sleeping and then the son in On his Holidays. 

October: in Sicily and Rome.


In December, he's back in London. He serves as chairman of a dinner given in honor of the artist Philip Wilson Steer.