There are 35 paintings by 20 different artists hanging on the walls of Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House. This is one of four landscapes by Adrian Scott Stokes, which were arranged in a row beneath portraits of King George V and Queen Mary in the Dolls’ House Saloon. Stokes, who began exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1876, was already well established on the English art scene, although this was his first royal commission. 

Stokes’s paintings were inspired by the plein-air practices of contemporary French landscape artists, as well as by the variety of beautiful landscapes he saw on his travels around Europe. He often painted sunsets, as they gave him the chance to experiment with the shifts in atmosphere and lighting in an evening landscape. However, this particular composition – the mountainous setting with a reflective pool of water in the foreground – does not seem to be an exact copy of any of his full-scale works.

The following year, Princess Marie Louise invited Stokes to contribute a work on paper to the Dolls’ House Library, for which he produced a delicate watercolour seascape (927408).