View of the 1867 Exposition Universelle

In 1867 Paris threw the largest World's Fair the world had yet seen, filling the whole Champ de Mars, and Manet was pointedly left out of its official art exhibition. So he built his own pavilion nearby and, from a rise on the far bank of the Seine, looked back across the fairgrounds and began this panorama. It is full of strolling visitors, a boy with a dog, a balloon floating over the exhibition halls. He never finished it. That June, news reached Paris that Emperor Maximilian, the French-backed ruler of Mexico, had been executed by firing squad, and Manet set this scene aside to work on that instead. The loose, unresolved figures are simply where he left off.