In London they made copies after paintings by Turner and later followed his sketching route along the coast of England, noting the "liberties" he had taken with the landscape. In 1866 Thomas returned to Europe to study paintings by European masters and to exhibit his major early work, Children of the Mountain, in the Exposition Universelle in Paris in the spring of 1867. At times mistaken for a western landscape, the picture was in fact an artistic invention. In 1867 Moran had not yet crossed the Mississippi River or seen the Rocky Mountains. Four years later, he used this painting as collateral to help finance the western trip that changed the course of his career.