Woman Writing a Letter

This painting has been stolen twice in the last twenty five years. Its owner, a British Member of Parliament, was targeted by armed members of the Irish Republican Army, who broke into his estate in 1974 and took a total of nineteen paintings, along with a Goya, two by Gainsborough and three by Rubens. The painting was recovered a week later. Then, in 1986, Dublin criminals stole the painting and only after more than seven years of secret negotiation and international detective work was the painting recovered. The work shows a middle-class woman attended by a maid who is presumably acting as messenger and go-between for the lady and her lover.