Samuel F.B. Morse’s 'Gallery of the Louvre' and the Art of Invention

February 17, 2017 -  June 4, 2017 - Reynolda House Museum of American Art will welcome an American masterwork for this exhibition, Samuel F.B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre (1831–33). Created when the artist was living and working in Paris, the painting represents the famed Salon Carée in the Musée du Louvre.  He also included several figures, including himself, in the center, instructing a young woman, and his good friend James Fenimore Cooper, the American writer, shown with his family. The resulting monumental canvas—six feet by nine feet—was both an example of Morse’s erudition and skill and a tool of instruction for American viewers who did not have access to Renaissance and Baroque paintings.