The thin, highly strung detective with extraordinary deductive powers was modeled partly on Dr. Joseph Bell, a medical school teacher at the University of Edinburgh, where Holmes' creator studied.
While the plein-air paintings of the Impressionists and post-Impressionists seem studied in comparison with the informality of these watercolors, we search the Sargents for evidence that their creator was aware of the developments in abstract art during the first decades of the 20th century.