Queen Victoria is depicted with Princess Helena and Princess Beatrice in the White Drawing Room at Windsor Castle. They are shown knitting quilts which they presented to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Netley, for soldiers wounded at Tel-el-Kebir in Egypt in 1882. In May 1885 Melville wrote to Queen Victoria to say the painting was nearly finished. He asked for ‘a few minutes sitting’, recalling ‘the old associations in which, I was connected with those so dear to you’ and the time when he had been ‘in the sunshine of your favor and the presence of that beloved One’. He was not granted a sitting, but two photographs were sent to him. Major Stocks wanted to present the picture to an institution, selected by the Queen, ‘as a memento of the care and consideration you have ever shewn to your servants in the united service’. Signed and dated: Alexr Melville / 1886.