John Singer Sargent

During the last decade of his life, Sargent was a prominent fixture in Boston's social and artistic life. Shortly after he anived from England in 1916 to install his completed murals in the Boston Public Library, the Museum of Fine Arts commissioned him to decorate the dome of its rotunda. His second museum commission came in 1922, the same year he accepted a commission to paint murals for Harvard University's Widener Library. Sargent was a prolific draftsman, and drawings like this impressive study of drapery were an important part of his working process.

During this period, Sargent and Smith were in frequent contact and had many mutual friends. Sargent was a guest of the Jameses and the Smiths in Dublin, where his old friend and patron Isabella Stewart Gardner also visited every summer. Sargent made his last visit to Dublin in 1924, the year before he died.