A procession scene, with King George V on horseback, centre, riding a bay horse, dressed in the scarlet military jacket of a field marshal; flanked by Kaiser Wilhelm II on the left, on a grey horse, the Duke of Connaught on the right, with crowds in the background and a facade (possibly intended to be Whitehall) sketched in.

The King Edward VII died on the 6 May 1910 and his funeral, attended by nine European heads of state, took place on the 20 May. Prior to that his body had lain in state at Westminster Hall for three days, an event which had attracted vast queues of subjects wishing to pay their respects.

In his biography of the King, Sidney Lee recounted the magnificence of the procession and pageant:

The streets…were rich in purple: venetian masts wreathed in laurel leaves bordered the funeral route. Houses, hotels, clubs and shops in the vicinity were fringed with purple or white….. Immediately behind Caesar [Bertie’s dog, who followed the coffin] rode a cavalcade such as rarely if ever had been seen before or since… Blazing with orders, resplendent in the scarlet and gold and blue and silver of military uniforms, came the kings and a vast number of princes and nobles.

The Times reported that… ‘The pavements in Whitehall were just one black blur of people, who were wedged so tightly that movement was well-nigh impossible.' It was here that the procession was accompanied by Beethoven’s Funeral march and Handel’s Dead March in Saul. After leaving Westminster Hall the procession passed through Whitehall, the Horse Guards and down the Mall to Marlborough House, then up St James’s Street to Piccadilly and Hyde Park to Marble Arch. It reached Paddington Station at 11 and from here the royal train, carrying the King’s coffin and members of the funeral procession departed for Windsor where the service was held at St George’s.

A special edition of the Illustrated London News, with contributions by artists such as Richard Caton Woodville and Samuel Begg, recorded in pictures the event unfolding. And it is possible that, given Scott’s reputation as an illustrator, the painting is connected to an illustration. Indeed, a few short, black strokes perpendicular to the edges of the painting may indicate initial marking-out or squaring-up lines to transfer a drawing to a larger format.

A real photograph postcard by Beagles and Co. captures King George V riding beside his cousin the German Emperor (RCIN 2303465.e) and a group photograph of the nine sovereigns who attended the funeral at Windsor, many of them related by blood or marriage to the deceased King conveys the importance of the occasion (RCIN 2934244). As the Illustrated London News commented … ‘the enemies of yesterday, and the feared enemies of to-morrow are side by side in an act of sorrow and homage.’