The Great Exhibition of 1851 took place at Hyde Park in a revolutionary glass and iron building known as the 'Crystal Palace'. It included over 13,000 exhibits and was the first international exhibition of manufactured products.

The exhibition attracted more than six million visitors, equivalent to a third of the population of Great Britain. This watercolour is from a group of images reproduced as colour lithographs in Recollections of the Great Exhibition, a lavish contemporary souvenir guide. The profits from the Great Exhibition were used to fund several science and art initiatives in South Kensington. They included what is now the Victoria and Albert Museum, whose earliest surviving building was erected in 1857.

This view of the Indian Court and Elephant Trappings must have been painted before the exhibition opened, as the howdah at the back of the court is not yet on the stuffed elephant that appears in the subsequent lithographs. To the left is one of the elm trees that were incorporated within the temporary building for the duration of the exhibition.