Executed in Paris and New York, Gallery of the Louvre is a key painting in the history of American art. Samuel F. B. Morse intended it to inspire and inform American audiences and to contribute to the development of the nation's cultural identity. Through his painting Morse sought to communicate complex ideas about the art museum's role in a democratic society. By showcasing the importance of instruction or learning from "masterpieces," Morse's tour-de-force painting goes beyond mere documentation of the Louvre's collection. It implies that future cultural achievements lay ahead in America's young democracy.

Formerly the residence of the French monarchy, the Louvre became a public art museum in 1793. Its Salon Carré, the gallery intended to display the museum's greatest masterpieces, contained European works primarily from the Renaissance and Baroque periods during Morse's first visit in 1830. By the time of Morse's second visit in 1831, the Salon Carré had been reinstalled with the French national collection of contemporary art. It was also the site of the annual Paris Salon, the prestigious government-sponsored exhibition, until 1850. Morse's depiction of the Salon Carré features his own imaginative installation of old world treasures in the Louvre collection, which he felt conveyed the exalted ideals of art. He never disclosed his reasons for selecting the masterworks included in his painting, although he wrote a guide identifying them in 1833.

Gallery of the Louvre is Morse's "gallery picture," a form first popularized in the seventeenth century, and the only major such example in the history of American art. In a gallery picture the works depicted are clear and distinctive copies of real or imaginary works of art that are related to foreground figures. Morse completed his copies of Louvre masterworks in Paris and returned to New York with his unfinished canvas in the fall of 1832. Resuming work on the Gallery of the Louvre the next winter, Morse added the figures in the foreground, but never identified them. With the exception of the woman and little girl dressed in quaint European provincial costume, seen exiting the Salon Carré, the individuals are believed to be Americans.

Scholars are confident that Morse is the centrally placed instructor and that his close friend James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), American author of the hugely popular Leatherstocking Tales, stands in the left corner with his wife and seated daughter. The male artist at his easel and the man who stands in awe with his hat in hand at the entrance of the gallery are thought to represent of Morse's roommates in Paris-American artists Horatio Greenough (1805–1852) and Richard W. Habersham (1812–1889), respectively. The two female copyists have yet to be identified.

Upon completing the painting, Morse considered exhibiting it in various locations, but only did so in New York and New Haven, Connecticut. Because of its lack of a discernable narrative, Gallery of the Louvre failed to attract casual or knowledgeable viewers, despite its optimistic message of the nation's great cultural potential.