A watercolour depicting a topographical interior view showing the Grand Staircase of Buckingham Palace. Signed and dated: Douglas Morison 1843.

Morison was commissioned in 1843 by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who became keen collectors of the fashionable nineteenth-century watercolour genre of interior views, to paint a series of interiors of Buckingham Palace (RCINs 919897-919901, 919912 and 919917). All but one of these watercolours were exhibited at the Old Watercolour Society annual exhibition in 1844, and attracted a satirical review from William Makepeace Thackeray, who was writing under the pseudonym Michael Angelo Titmarsh.

Thomas Stothard and his son were responsible for the sculpted friezes visible at the top of this watercolour, and the candelabra and stands were supplied by Thomas Vulliamy, 1810-13. This watercolour shows the short-lived appearance of the landing at the top of the Grand Staircase between John Nash's designing of the staircase in 1830 and Prince Albert's redecoration of the space in 1845-6; see RCIN 919902 for a watercolour which records the later decorative scheme, which also no longer survives.