The Coronation Luncheon to George V and Queen Mary in the Guildhall, London, 29 June 1911

The Coronation Luncheon for George V and Queen Mary at the Guildhall on 29 June 1911 was one of the great set-piece events of Edwardian pageantry, bringing together the monarch, the royal household, government, and the City of London in the ancient hall that had witnessed centuries of civic ceremony. Solomon Joseph Solomon's decision — or commission — to record this event in a large-scale group composition placed him in a tradition of state occasion paintings stretching back to Hogarth and Canaletto. Completed in 1918, seven years after the event, the painting reflects on an Edwardian world already catastrophically transformed by the First World War. The Guildhall Art Gallery's possession of the work makes it a centrepiece of the City of London's visual record of its own historical dignity and its relationship with the Crown.

State occasion paintings of this type require extraordinary compositional management — dozens of identifiable figures within a grand architectural setting. Solomon would have worked from photographic references, individual portrait studies, and his knowledge of the Guildhall interior. The challenge is to maintain legibility of faces while conveying the splendour of the setting.