Following the success of his designs at the All-Russia Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod in 1896, Konstantin Korovin was invited to take an active part in the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, where he acted as both an architect designing one of the buildings of the Russian pavilion, and as the author of a series of decorative panels devoted to the subject of the Russian North. Korovin’s designs proved to be a great success, earning him two gold and seven silver medals in addition to the order of Légion d'Honneur.

At the end of the exhibition, the commissioner of the Russian department, Prince Vyacheslav Tenishev hosted a gala dinner at the Hôtel Continental in Paris. The evening was meticulously planned and delivered by his wife Princess Maria Tenisheva, a renowned philanthropist and patron of the arts. It was she who had recommended Korovin to her husband as one of the main designers of the Russian pavilion. In her memoirs, Princess Tenisheva wrote: ‘The dinner was planned for two hundred and fifty people, and, trying to make it more original, I came up with the idea of printing menus accompanied by vignettes made by our artists. Each menu included a small watercolour by Korovin, Golovin, Davydova, Elisaveta Bem, Malyutin (...) and several other artists. Everything was ready for the event, and the menus, tied with ribbons, immediately became the object of desire, so that as soon as the guests entered the hall, the menus on many tables disappeared. But I foresaw this, and I had a certain amount left in reserve.’

The present watercolour by Korovin accompanied by the original menu, which also includes the programme of music for the evening (figs.1-2), ended up in the hands of the renowned architect and general commissioner of the exhibition Joseph-Antoine Bouvard.