This is a smaller replica of the picture painted by Winterhalter for the King of the French which is now at Versailles. King Louis-Philippe arrived at Windsor just after 2pm but there is some confusion as to the exact event recorded in this painting. The scene is set in the Grand Reception Room, but Queen Victoria in fact received her visitor in the Grand Entrance. The painting may represent the moment when Queen Victoria (with her mother and Prince Albert) presented her four eldest children to the King. According to the account in her Journal, however, this took place after lunch in the White Drawing-Room. A contemporary observer recorded that it took place in the Grand Reception Room after dinner but that only the three eldest children appeared. On the left of the picture stand the members of the Household and Government, among them the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, the Prime Minister (the first two figures in the row behind the ladies). The King had been anxious for a record of his reception and the French royal family were delighted with their picture. There is no contemporary record of Queen Victoria paying for this painting, but from the notes in the Queen’s Journal it seems as though she had made the original order but the King had expressed a wish to give it to her. Queen Victoria admired the ‘striking likenesses and considered it ‘really very valuable’.