A watercolour depicting a distant view of the Palace of Holyroodhouse, with the remains of the ancient abbey on the left, assorted buildings and houses facing the front entrance at the bottom of the Royal Mile and Arthur's Seat beyond. This view of the palace is extremely similar to a lithograph made by Thomas Picken after a drawing by Harding and published in a four-volume series titled Scotland Delineated: In a Series of Views (1847-54); there are differences in the figures in the foreground.

The Palace of Holyroodhouse was used as a royal residence by Queen Victoria and her family from 1850 onwards, a conveninent stopping point on the journey north from London or Windsor to Balmoral Castle in the Highlands. Victoria and her husband first saw the Palace during a carriage ride through Edinburgh on their first visit to Scotland in September 1842, but did not visit it properly until 1850, when they spent two nights in 'the interesting & antient Palace of my ancestors' (Queen Victoria's journal, 29th August 1850) during which they climbed to the top of Arthur's Seat, an ancient volcano. While in Edinburgh Prince Albert also laid the foundation stone for the National Gallery of Scotland.

Although there is no record of the commission of this watercolour or a payment made for it, it was mounted by Victoria and Albert in View Album V, which covered the years 1849-52. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert compiled nine View Albums during their marriage. These albums contained watercolours and drawings documenting their life together and were arranged in chronological order. The albums were dismantled in the early twentieth century and rebound in new volumes both in a different arrangement and with additional items, but a written record of their original contents and arrangement still exists.