Unkown artists at the Louvre?

Have you already read this? It's quite a bit of text, but a good read. Long before the Lost Generation of literary migrs and today's "Da Vinci Code"inspired tourism, Paris captivated the American imagination. At the center of this early love affair was the Louvre, an unofficial academy for American artists almost as soon as it opened in 1793. With 30 major works spanning the late 18th century to the 1940s, the new exhibit "American Artists and the Louvre" shows how considerable a role the museum played for American painters. The exhibition includes artists whose work was influenced by art at the Louvre, along with American paintings that have an intimate link to the museum, having been exhibited in its salons or included in its collection. The first exhibition of American art in the Louvre's long history, it also sheds light on how the cultural fascination has been mutual save for the occasional bout of browbeating. Without a national museum of their own, 19th-century American artists ... more