The reverse of this coloured photograph carries the photographer's studio details: Hills and Saunders / Eton. The image of the Duchess of Cambridge shows her in widow's dress with a black lace cap and a white lace fichu pinned with a pearl and diamond brooch. Hills & Saunders coloured photographic copy is after the oil portrait by Heinrich von Angeli of the Duchess of Cambridge painted for Queen Victoria in May-June 1877 shortly before the Duchess's eightieth birthday (404039; Royal Collection).

Hills & Saunders were leading London photographers, based at 48 Porchester Terrace, Bayswater (1869), 36 Porchester Terrace (1870 – 87) and 47 Sloane Street (1894 – 6); they also maintained studios outside London, at Eton, Aldershot, Sandhurst, Oxford and Cam-bridge.