The Louvre is continuing to showcase American art through its partnership with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, Arkansas), the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Terra Foundation for American Art.
This year's theme is the development of genre painting in the United States from the first half of the 19th century to the Civil War, a period of economic and territorial expansion for the young nation. Interest in art was not yet widespread, and European academic canons struggled to find an audience. Some American artists - such as George Caleb Bingham, Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait and Eastman Johnson - met with popular success by painting scenes that depicted the daily lives of people on the fringes of society, those who ventured into the huge country's virgin territories. Though seemingly naive in style, these images of trappers or Mississippi boatmen were influenced by European genre paintings, notably those from the Dutch Golden Age and contemporary British works.