January: he is elected Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA) and John begins his assent into the establishment. In the wake of this accomplishment he writes to Ralph Curtis.

April-May: he paints  W. Graham Robertson.

He shows the first section of the Boston murals at the Royal Academy exhibition (see 1895).

He is awarded the Temple Gold Medal, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
 

In January he attends the opening night of Henry James's play, Guy Doniville. Henry James is booed by the audience.  James who was a long admirer of Sargent's work, had praised John in print well before and after the Madame X (1884) scandal, and was a big supporter of Sargent coming to England, is now being rejected by the public. James becomes deeply depressed and abandons any further attempts to write for the theater. Sargent is outraged by the publics response.
 

April 6th: he travels to Boston for the first stage of the Boston Public Library mural installation.  On April 25th the murals are unveiled at a reception given by Charles McKim the architect of the building. The completed murals would later be called Triumph of Religion.
See footnote

The first panels represented the Old Testament with the Children of Israel under oppression and surrounded by pagan gods then finally freed by Moses. 

In the North lunette, top is the oppression. To the right and left and above in the vaulting ceiling is the pagan gods that surrounded the Jews. Below the oppression is the Frieze of Prophets symbolizing the progression of faith and the prophesy of the coming Messiah. In the middle is Moses who lead them from captivity with the ten commandments.

So thrilled with his work at the Boston Public Library, the Trustees invited Sargent to extend his decorations to the entire hall. Sargent agreed. Edward Robinson works to raise funds towards the continuation of the mural cycle. With a much expanded project on his hands, by the end of the year he has found space at 12–14 The Avenue,  Fulham Road in London about five blocks from his home on Tite Street and would keep this second, more larger studio for twenty-one years. His work on this mural project would span for an additional twenty-four years.

In May, his painting Coventry Patmore (1894) is exhibited back in London at the Royal Academy.

May/June: Sargent visits George Vanderbilt's Biltmore estate which was under construction, and in Asheville, North Carolina. There he paints Vanderbilt, the architect Richard Morris Hunt who designed the massive estate, and the landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted, who laid out the grounds.


 

At the end of the month he sails for Spain and there copies El Greco's Pieta in the Prado, then on to North Africa.

October: he's back in London and is a visitor at the Royal Academy Schools and would visit the schools for many years following.