On returning to the United States he developed a reputation as a portraitist including his 1819 depiction of James Monroe However, he is better known today as an inventor who gave his name to the Morse Code.

[2] Included in the painting are Morse's friends the author James Fenimore Cooper, his daughter Susan and the sculptor Horatio Greenough.

Although these works were in fact spread across the Louvre, Morse imagines them all in the iconic Salon Carré.

They include the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, La belle jardinière by Raphael, The Young Beggar by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo and The Wedding at Cana by Paolo Veronese.

[5] On his return to the United States, Morse exhibited the painting but although appreciated by artists and connoisseurs, the response of the public was poor and it was a commercial failure.