Throughout her life, Queen Victoria commissioned watercolours as mementoes of her travels. After her marriage to Prince Albert, and probably with his advice, she began mounting them into a series of themed albums. By far the most important and largest set of these were the Souvenir Albums, which contained views of places visited and events attended in strict chronological order. The Queen and Prince spent many happy hours mounting the drawings together.

This watercolour depicts Lochnagar, the highest mountain on the Balmoral estate in Scotland, which the royal couple had bought in 1848. On 22 September 1849 the royal party made their first expedition up to the summit. Queen Victoria described it as ‘one of the wildest, grandest things imaginable; the Expedition took us 7 hours; the Lake is about 1,000 feet [300 m] below the highest point. - & Albert thinks it very like the Crater of Mount Vesuvius’.