Americans and Paris.(Musee du Louvre)

A different cross-fertilization--the development of artistic exchanges between France and the United States--is examined in an exhibition at the Musee du Louvre in Paris. Almost since the Louvre became a museum in 1793, it has held an annual salon, which has consistently contained American paintings. George Catlin, who remained in Paris to promote his paintings of American Indians for nearly thirty years in the mid-nineteenth century, was a particular favorite and was invited by Louis-Philippe to exhibit at the salon.

The museum itself has been a familiar and important destination for American artists for centuries. Benjamin West, for example, traveled to France three times and was elected a member of the Academie des Beaux-Arts. Some of his paintings were in the Louvre collection for a time, and he was an influence on Jacques Louis David and Eugene Delacroix. Samuel F. B. Morse, who came to France in 1831, painted pictures of galleries in the Louvre, one of which belongs to the Terra Foundation and usually hangs in the Art Institute ...