The painting shows the Queen, wearing the Dalmatic Robe but not the Crown and no jewels, receiving the Sacrament towards the end of the ceremony of her Coronation. The peers and peeresses have taken off their coronets. The Sacrament is being administered by the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Howley, assisted by the Sub-Dean, the Reverend Lord John Thynne. Viscount Melbourne stands behind the Queen, holding the Sword of State. Princess Feodora, Queen Victoria's half-sister, wrote to the Queen later that year that the moment depicted in the painting 'was the most touching of the whole ceremony, and one that is always before me; human greatness bowing before greatness above, I saw many eyes that were filled with tears; and I shall never forget that picture'.

Queen Victoria was delighted with the painting too. She thought 'the group of my youthful trainbearers is excessively pretty…I like it so much that I have said I will buy it'. She wrote to Princess Feodora that it was 'the loveliest picture of the coronation you can imagine; it is to be for me, and is a great deal smaller than Hayter's picture [RCIN 405409] …. He has got me so like … and all the others, he has got so like, I am charmed with it'. It was met with enthusiasm by contemporaries who described it as 'the chef d'oeuvre of the Coronation' and 'so beautiful a treatment of a subject…I have never seen by any painter, ancient or modern … a most affecting thing; and though filled with accurate portraits, there is a simplicity maintained through the whole which gives it a highly historic … poetic, character'. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1843.

On the back of the original canvas there is a key to the people represented.