This drawing depicts the entrance to the sculpture gallery in the Palais des Beaux-Arts, the structure built to house the fine art exhibits included in the Exposition Internationale which was held in Paris from May to November 1855. It represents the installation process, during which large sculptures are carted into the space while a crowd looks on. The 1855 Exposition Internationale set out to rival the Great Exhibition of 1851 held in London's Hyde Park, and attracted 5,162,330 visitors. It was the first of five World Fairs held in Paris in the 19th century.

Eyre Crowe (1824-1910) spent his early years in Paris, and in 1839 entered the studio of the history painter Paul Delaroche. He later settled in London and registered at the Royal Academy Schools. He became secretary to his cousin, the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, and accompanied him on a lecture tour of America in 1852 as his ‘factotum and amanuensis’. After his return to England, Crowe built a successful career as a painter of genre and historical subjects. He exhibited annually at the Royal Academy from 1857 to 1908, but never attained the rank of Academician. He was an honorary member of the 'St John’s Wood Clique', a group of artists who specialised in historical genre painting.

From 1859 Crowe acted as occasional examiner and inspector of the Government Schools of Art, based in the Victoria and Albert Museum (then called the South Kensington Museum). He designed two mosaics for the museum's gallery of portraits known as the ‘Kensington Valhalla’ (William Hogarth and Sir Christopher Wren), and in 1868 he painted one of the lunette paintings in room 101 of the V&A showing scenes relating to art education, Modelling from Life.