John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) was the most successful portrait painter of his era, as well as a gifted landscape painter and watercolorist. Sargent was born in Florence, Italy to American parents. He studied in Italy and Germany, and then in Paris under Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran, who's atelier was progressive, dispensing with the traditional academic approach which required careful drawing and underpainting, in favor of the alla prima method of working directly on the canvas with a loaded brush.

In the early 1880s Sargent regularly exhibited portraits at the Salon, and these were mostly full-length portrayals of women. Sargent's best portraits reveal the individuality and personality of the sitters; his most ardent admirers think he is matched in this only by Velázquez, who was one of Sargent's great influences. When his painting Madame X was unveiled in Paris at the 1884 Salon, it aroused such a negative reaction that it prompted Sargent to move to London. In 1894 Sargent was elected an associate of the Royal Academy, and was made a full member three years later. Although Sargent was an American expatriate, he returned to the United States many times, often to answer the demand for commissioned portraits. Many of his most important works are in museums in the U.S.

John Singer Sargent is buried in Brookwood Cemetery near Woking, Surrey.