At fifteen, Claude Monet was a successful local artist in Le Havre, selling caricatures of local bigwigs and minor celebrities through a framing shop. The works were cruelly observant portraits, and Monet charged about 20 francs each, sometimes making seven or eight a day. Some were imitations of the caricaturist Nadar, and others included jokes such as the caricature Rufus Croutinelli, a pun on a word for a daub of paint. Monet later said he first encountered the work of his mentor Eugène Boudin while admiring the paintings hung in that framing shop. The roughly 2,000 francs he earned paid for his move to Paris against his father's wishes.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.