Richard Ormond is a Sargent scholar and independent art historian. He is a great-nephew of John Singer Sargent. Elaine Kilmurray is coauthor and research director of the John Singer Sargent catalogue raisonne project, of which this is the sixth volume.

Throughout his career - and particularly in the period from 1898 to 1913 - John Singer Sargent painted the spectacular architecture and scenes of everyday life in Venice, as he sat alongside the Grand Canal or in a gondola in the sleepy side canals. This lavishly illustrated book presents all the luminous masterworks that Sargent completed during that fertile fifteen-year period: oils and watercolours that reveal his taste for the Renaissance, Baroque and high style in art and architecture as they were seen in the city's unique light. The book reproduces and documents 141 works, including several that are published for the first time. An authoritative essay explores the aesthetics of Sargent's Venetian work, places it in the context of his oeuvre as a whole, explains Sargent's relationships with his patrons in Venice and discusses the exhibitions and marketing of this work in London and New York. The book also provides a map of Venice marking every known location that Sargent painted and displays dozens of contemporary colour photographs of the sites.