The remarkable portraits for which John Singer Sargent is most famous are only one aspect of a career that included landscapes, watercolors, figure subjects, and murals. Even within portraiture, his style ranged from bold experiments to studied formality. And the subjects of his paintings were as varied as his styles, including the leaders of fashionable society, rural laborers, city streets, remote mountains, and the front lines of World War I.

This book surveys and evaluates the extraordinary range of Sargent's work, and reproduces 155 of his paintings in color. It accompanies a spectacular international exhibition - the first major retrospective of the artist's career since the memorial exhibitions that followed his death.

Richard Ormond presents a biographical sketch and, in a second essay, reviews Sargent's development as an artist. Mary Crowford Volk explores his thirty-year involvement with painting murals - in particular the works at the Boston Public Library and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts that Sargent regarded as his greatest achievement.