The Silver Jubilee of George V was celebrated on 6 May 1935, marking twenty-five years of the King’s reign over the United Kingdom and British Dominions and as Emperor of India. A carriage procession took place through London to St Paul's Cathedral for a Thanksgiving Service and later in the day the King waved from the balcony of Buckingham Palace, repeating the gesture for several days afterwards due to the demand of the crowds. Parties and pageants were held across the country and the celebrations continued throughout May. At 8 o’clock in the evening on 6 May, perhaps around the time of this scene, the King's Jubilee Speech was broadcast to the nation.

Sir Peter Markham Scott was born and grew up at 174 Buckingham Palace Road, overlooking Victoria Station. Just a short walk away from Buckingham Palace, both the Palace and its surrounding parks would have been familiar to the artist from his childhood. This painting of ducks gliding across the water of St James’s Park Lake with an illuminated Buckingham Palace in the background has a quiet but sparkling atmosphere, a peaceful moment after the grandeur and jollity of the day’s Jubilee celebrations. Scott held annual summer exhibitions at Ackermann's Gallery, which also published limited edition prints of his work, from 1933 to 1939. The 1935 exhibition was opened by the English novelist Hugh Walpole (1884-1941). Describing these exhibitions in his autobiography The Eye of the Wind (1961), Scott writes that ‘it had all become alarmingly, dangerously, but delightfully fashionable’. Visitors to these exhibitions included Mary, Princess Royal and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

Mary, Princess Royal, the only daughter of George V and aunt of Queen Elizabeth II, purchased the painting from the 1935 exhibition at Ackermann's Gallery. The picture was included in the 1936 catalogue of the collection of her estate, Harewood House, and the archives of both her estate and Christie’s record the auction of the painting in 1966, after her death.

In Scott’s autobiography he relates an anecdote of his first encounter with the Princess Royal, quite possibly at this exhibition: ‘The first royal visit to one of my exhibitions began disastrously. I was sitting on one of the print cupboards in the outer room of the gallery, dangling my legs over the edge and talking to Betty Gilbert, who helped to sell the pictures, when two ladies came in. One of the faces was vaguely familiar, so I smiled, nodded and went on talking to Betty. The two ladies passed on into the inner room. Betty said, 'Wasn't that the Princess Royal?' 'Great heavens! Of course it was—how awful!' In confusion I dashed through to apologise, but Her Royal Highness would allow it no further thought, and in a moment we were discussing the Whooper Swans which came to the lake at Harewood’.