A pencil and bodycolour drawing showing the interior of a train carriage in which the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York are seated with another man; two Black servants with fans kneel on floor. Signed and dated, lower left.

In March 1901 the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York (the future King George V and Queen Mary) embarked upon a tour that would include visits to almost every country in the British Empire. Most of their time was spent in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, but they also visited Singapore and Mauritius. On 12th April 1901 they reached Colombo, the capital of Ceylon [Sri Lanka], from where they took a train to the province of Kandy. If the inscription on the drawing is correct, the royal couple made a brief stop at Kandy before boarding the train back to Colombo.

Under the expansionist policies of the British East India company, Ceylon was wrested from Dutch control and taken as a crown colony in 1802. The kingdom of Kandy, in what is today the Central Province of Sri Lanka, remained independent until 1815, when the British succeeded in taking control. Kandy was administered separately, its laws, religion and institutions permitted to remain largely unaffected. Following a rebellion in 1818, this special status was recinded, and the Kandyan provinces were integrated with the rest of the country.