An ink and wash compositional study for The First Council of Queen Victoria (RCIN 404710) showing the young Queen seated on the left, with Lord Melbourne standing behind the table, the Duke of Wellington to the right and the Duke of Sussex in front of the table, all clearly defined. Other less-realised figures are in the background.

Queen Victoria held her first council in the Red Saloon at Kensington Palace at eleven on 20 July 1837; William IV had died in the early hours of that morning, so this was not in Princess Victoria's diary when she retired on the previous evening. She was eighteen years old at the time but behaved, according to Greville's account, with 'perfect calmness and self-possession'. The members of the Accession Council are identified in the key published with Charles Fox's engraving after the picture. Those most prominent in this study include Lord Melbourne, holding the paper centrally; The Duke of Wellington, standing in front of thr right-hand column; Augustus, Duke of Sussex, seated on the near side of the table. Wilkie painted the sitters from life, and a number of his sittings are recorded in letters sold at Sotheby's, 21 July 1981 (lot 391).

Queen Victoria sat to Wilkie a number of times during the latter two weeks of October 1837. Writing to a correspondent on 28 October, Wilkie recorded that '[the Queen] sat to-day in the dress - a white satin, covered with gauze embroidered - I think it looks well. All here think the subject good, and she likes it herself.' (Cunningham, III, p. 227). However, the Queen later described the painting, which was completed in 1838, as ‘one of the worst pictures I have ever seen, both as to painting & likeness’. At a stroke Queen Victoria dismissed the ‘painterly’ depiction of ceremony in favour of the purely documentary, practiced by Sir George Hayter (1792-1871) and many others.