One of London's largest parks, Hyde Park extends from Bayswater Road in the North to Knightsbridge in the South. At the beginning of the 17th century, Hyde Park was opened to the public and became a fashionable place for visiting, particularly on May Day. In 1730 Queen Caroline undertook the formation of the lake known as the Serpentine by damming the Westbourne. Flowers were planted in 1860 and the Italian Water Garden at Victoria Gate was made the following year.

Cropsey first journeyed to Europe in 1847, and moved to London in 1856 where he took a studio in Kensington Gate, Hyde Park South. His landscapes of this period were influenced by the English painters Turner and Constable, and show Cropsey's ability to combine accurate detail with atmospheric light--qualities which appear again in his Hudson River school pictures of the following decades.

This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artists's work, which is being prepared by the Newington-Cropsey Foundation, Hastings-on-Hudson.