A hand coloured print depicting the west front of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton. The outlines are faintly etched, and the sheet has been heavily overpainted with watercolour. Inserted in a volume in the Royal Library which is a reissue of John Nash's original publication of illustrations of the exterior and interiors of the pavilion; this incorporates Nash's original dedication to George IV and listing of the plates (see RCIN 1163283 for a copy of this volume), as well as a new dedication to Queen Victoria, another listing of the illustrations and an essay by Edward Wedlake Brayley entitled A History of the Palace at Brighton. An annotation in ink to Nash's original plate listing records that nine associated watercolours were inserted in 1928 by Queen Mary (see RCINs 918153-918161).

The transformation of the Royal Pavilion at Brighton from a modest villa (known as the Marine Pavilion) to a grand palace took place in the Regency period at the direction of the Prince Regent, later George IV, for whom it was a seaside residence. The architect responsible was John Nash, who also led a number of other large-scale royal building projects, and both the exterior and interiors of the palace at Brighton were strongly influenced by the fashionable taste for East Asian aesthetics. Queen Victoria, however, rarely used the palace and sold the building to the city of Brighton in 1850, though having previously transferred much of its contents to Buckingham Palace.