"John Singer Sargent, the celebrated portrait painter of the fashionable and famous of the fin de siecle and the Gilded Age, maintained the yearly routine, begun during his student days, of taking painting sabbaticals with a select company of artist friends and family, traveling as far east as Palestine and as far west as the Canadian Rockies.

John Esten has assembled a shining collection of drawings, paintings, and watercolors by Sargent - many of them rarely seen - on the friends and family that accompanied him on these holiday excursions. Sargent's works, along with selected paintings, watercolors, and photographs done by his friends in the locations where he painted them, have been further illuminated by descriptions of artists painting and outdoor places by Sargent's champion and life-long friend Henry James."--BOOK JACKET.