Contrary to the artist's inscribed date of 1906, Mrs. Morgan apparently sat for Sargent between 1904 and 1905 when she was 36 years old.
The Boston-born Jane "Jessie" Norton Grew married J. P. Morgan, Jr., in 1890. Sargent painted her portrait in 1904-5 in London, where the Morgans had lived since 1898. Jessie Morgan noted in her scrapbook that Sargent "thinks it the best work he has done this year. He arranged a mirror so that I could watch him paint. It was thrilling to see him work." The following year, Sargent largely ceased the time-consuming work of painting portraits in oil, favoring the expediency of charcoal. While a drawn portrait could be completed in two to three hours, Jessie Morgan sat to Sargent thirteen times for this painting. Sargent declined to paint her husband's portrait the following year. -- Exhibition Label, from "John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Charcoal"