Loan to display with the permanent collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 1907 the financier and collector J. Pierpont Morgan purchased A Lady Writing, and the following year he placed it on extended loan at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it remained on display alongside the permanent collection through 1913. The arrangement was typical of Morgan’s relationship with the Met, where he served as a trustee and later as president, lending works from his vast private holdings for public benefit.

After Morgan’s death in 1913 the painting passed to his son, J. P. Morgan Jr., and eventually changed hands several more times before reaching the National Gallery of Art, Washington, as a gift of Harry Waldron Havemeyer and Horace Havemeyer Jr. in memory of their father, Horace Havemeyer, in 1974.