In August 1822 George IV paid a state visit to Edinburgh, the first friendly visit by a monarch since the union of the two kingdoms. Wilkie, who had hopes of painting a scene from the visit for the King, was at the royal landing with William Collins, when 'to our surprise, who should start up upon the occasion to see the same occurence, but J. M. W. Turner, Esq., R.A. P.P. !!! who is now with us we cannot tell how; so he wrote to his sister on 16 August. No finished paintings of the visit were subsequently exhibited, but Turner did paint this work and another of 'George IV at St. Giles's, Edinburgh' (Tate Gallery 2857), in which the figures, though somewhat caricature-like, are painted with a bravura and a sense of character that look forward to the sketches in body-colour done at Petworth a few years later (see Nos.341-362). There is what seems to be a rapid sketch of the scene in the 'King's Visit to Scotland' sketchbook (T.B.CC-22v). The visit also provided material for some of the plates for Provincial Antiquities of Scotland, published 1819-26, and some of Turner's later illustrations to Sir Walter Scott (see Nos.289-92). Turner travelled both ways by sea, making sketches for The Rivers of England, 1823-7, and The Ports of England, 1826-8 (see Nos.239-44).