This painting is the third commissioned portrait of Queen Alexandra by Edward Hughes; the first dated 1896, is set into the walls in the White Drawing Room at Sandringham (RCIN 402355); the second depicted Queen Alexandra at the first opening of Parliament of the new reign, 1902 (recorded at Marlborough House in November 1925). It depicts the Queen dressed in Coronation robes; a golden dress, swathed in a crimson, ermine-lined cloak with a crown upon her head and can be compared with the near contemporary State portrait of the Queen by Luke Fildes, dated 1905 (RCIN 404554).

The portrait was to be a gift from Queen Alexandra to her father Christian IX of Denmark, however, according to the artist's daughter, Alice Hughes…' long before it was finished the Court declared that such a beautiful likeness of Her Majesty must never leave the country. The Queen therefore presented it to The King on the anniversary of their wedding day, March 10th [1904]' (My Father and I, 1923, p85). Edward and Alice Hughes spent the day of the Coronation, August 9, 1902, at Buckingham Palace and it was here that Hughes began to make the first sketch for the portrait. Alice captured the Queen in profile in her Coronation robes (see RCIN 2106304).

Hughes painted three replicas of the portrait; one was presented to the King of Denmark and is hung in Frederiksborg Castle; the second was for the Durbar Hall of Patiala Palace, India; the third was in the possession of Alice Hughes after her father's death, but passed to Earl Howe, c. 1914.