Gallery of the Louvre (1831–33)
Samuel F. B. Morse (1791–1872), of Morse code fame, may be better known as an inventor, but he began his career as a painter, and his extraordinary six-by-nine-foot masterwork, Gallery of the Louvre
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Created between 1831 and 1833 in Paris and New York, Gallery of the Louvre reproduces famous works by van Dyck, Leonardo, Murillo, Poussin, Rembrandt, Rubens, and Titian, among others, arranged in an imagined installation in the Salon Carré at the Musée du Louvre in Paris. Morse depicted 38 paintings, two sculptures, and numerous figures in a single composition. The monumental canvas has been seen as a painted treatise on artistic practice, positioning Morse (the centrally placed instructor in the work) as a symbolic link between European art of the past and America’s cultural future.
