Making an Impression

World Expositions launched artists like Gauguin and Manet (whose careers needed a nudge) by exposing them to a wild buffet of influences—weird music, exotic plants, and fauna—fueling their creativity. The 1855 Exposition Universelle popularized portable, pre-mixed paint tubes, which Renoir claimed were essential for Impressionism, letting painters escape the studio and capture fleeting moments anywhere in nature.

Even Monet owes his immortal status to a World Expo: In 1889, Joseph Bory Latour-Marliac showcased his dazzling, multicolored hybrid water lilies near the Eiffel Tower. Monet, then 49 and already shaping Impressionism, was thunderstruck by this riot of color. (For his part, Latour-Marliac was awarded Diplomas of Honor and Gold Medals.) The artist soon transformed his Giverny pond with these lilies, painting them obsessively—now immortalized in L’Orangerie’s “Nymphéas.” It’s a testament to the serendipity of walking by the right exhibit at the right time.