John Singer Sargeant was born in Italy to American parents. He studied at the Florence Academy and in 1874 began studies in Paris, showing there at the Salon from 1878. The following year he visited Spain where he was greatly taken with the work of Velázquez. In 1886 he settled in London where he soon gained a reputation as a fashionable society painter and it was in this capacity that he amassed enough of a personal fortune to begin to turn down portraiture commissions and concentrate on his increasing interest in watercolours. He also provided a series of murals for the Boston Public Library and Museum during the early 1890s and showed regularly at the Royal Academy. He became an Academician in 1897. He was an official War Artist during the 1914–1918 War, providing one of the period's more famous images, 'Gassed' for the Ministry of Information.