Rudolph Swoboda had sailed for India on 7 October 1886. Queen Victoria paid for his passage and gave him £300 to cover his travelling expenses. In return he was to provide the Queen with sketches worth £300. The Queen gave Swoboda specific instructions: ‘The Sketches Her Majesty wishes to have – are of the various types of the different nationalities. They should consist of heads of the same size as those already done for The Queen, and also small full lengths, as well as sketches of landscapes, buildings, and other scenes. Her Majesty does not want any large pictures done at first, but thinks that perhaps you could bring away material for making them should they eventually be wished for.’

In addition to over 40 of these portraits, also in the Royal Collection, Swoboda painted this picture of a group of children and an older man waiting at the barrier beside a railway line as it passes through a village near Madras, the tracks of which are just visible in the lower left corner of the painting. While it may first appear to have been painted en plein air, it has been argued that this painting may in fact have been completed in London, prior to its exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1892. The model for the figure of the older man is Khazan Singh, whose portrait Swoboda had painted earlier (RCIN 403769).  Similarly, the boy perched on the fence is probably Sunder Singh, an art student from Lahore (RCIN 403753) and the younger girl in the red sari might be Gulzar, the 'dancing girl' (RCIN 403755).
A larger, looser watercolour of the same subject, with a few notable changes to the architecture in the village in the background of the painting, and the jewellery worn by the central figure of the young girl in a red sari, was sold at Christie's London, 15 June 2011 (Lot 312).

Signed: Rudolf L. Swoboda. On the back of the frame is a label in the artist’s hand giving an alternative title: ‘Waiting for the Train … Madras’.