The Latest Village Scandal was one of two paintings by E.L. Henry accepted for exhibition in the Universal Exposition of 1889, held in Paris to celebrate the centennial of the French Revolution. Henry's work proved as appealing in France as it was to the general public in America, and he was awarded an honorable mention by the international jury on June 24. The wickedly delightful depiction of a country couple gossiping across the buckboards with a neighborly old codger, while clearly American in its humor and subject, was not out of keeping with other genre scenes by American expatriates and French painters that were included in the exposition. In fact, despite its nostalgic associations, the painting is typical of a shift in interest from "old-fashioned" landscapes to the figure and genre paintings that were seen by the selection committee as being representative of current trends in American and European painting.

According to Kaycee Benton Para, The Latest Village Scandal is the second of two versions of the subject (the first titled The Latest News), and is probably the one exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1886. Like many of Henry's paintings, the picture depicts the landscape and locals of Cragsmoor, New York, where Henry and his wife began construction of a summer house in 1883. Oliver Evans and his wife Nancy, who appear in other Henry paintings, are the models for the wife and the lone man.

Henry's fidelity to historical detail is well-known, and the buckboards depicted in The Latest Village Scandal, like many of the other props seen in his paintings, may have been part of his own collection of carriages, post-chaises, costumes, antiques, and general bric-a-brac.