This domestic scene, showing Queen Victoria and her daughter Princess Louise drying themselves by the fire at Alt Dourie Cottage near the Balmoral Estate, has been bound into one of Queen Victoria’s sketchbooks. It is likely that the watercolour records an event on 26 October 1865, which Queen Victoria recorded in her Journal: ‘At ¼ p.[ast] 12 drove … up behind Invercauld…it came on to rain heavily, so that we got off & drove to the small tea house beyond Invercauld, where we established ourselves in the kitchen, made a good fire & took our luncheon.’