A reduced version of the prime picture, dated 1870, now in the Musée d'Orsay, which was acquired by the Louvre in 1872 and exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in 1878.

'My aim is to depict the real Moors in the way they used to be,' [Regnault] wrote, 'rich and great, both terrifying and voluptuous, the ones that are to be found only in past history.' He sent for an extra-large canvas from France and build himself a new studio on the outskirts of Tangiers which gave him sufficient space to paint A Summary Execution under the Moorish Kings of Granada. In this spectacular picture, the harmony of the apricots, peaches and reds do nothing to mitigate the terrible violence of the bloody scene. When it was hung in the Musée du Luxembourg, people were said to be 'so overcome by its horrible realism as to be seized by faintness.' (L. Thornton, The Orientalists Painter-Travellers, Paris, 1994, p. 152)
'The Sultan, lord of the massacres and treasures, whose subjects were slaves and who was accountable to none but Allah, and his representatives, the visiers and pashas, had to have a superhuman beauty.' P. Jullian, The Orientalists, Oxford, 1977, p. 88

There is a preparatory drawing in the Musée de Beaux Arts d'Orleans