Chopin, Napoleon, and Jennifer Lawrence at the Louvre—Two Artists in Dialogue with the Museum’s Heritage / Photo Gallery

A dialoguebetween contemporary art , history , and the heritage of the Louvre Museum in Paris is highlighted through works by artists Elizabeth Peyton and Kader Attia.

Composer Frédéric Chopin and painter Eugène Delacroix, Emperor Napoleon I, writer Gustave Flaubert, and actress Jennifer Lawrence appear in Elizabeth Peyton’s vision, on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris, after the American artist spent two years in a creative residency there alongside French artist Kader Attia.

Older and newer works inspired by French art and history fill the Salle de la Chapelle in the Sully Wing of the museum. Of particular note is Frédéric Chopin, a 1988 portrait by Peyton based on the one painted by Eugène Delacroix in 1838, one of her early works. “It’s important because that’s where the beginnings of my relationship with French culture lie—a relationship that has since developed so much—especially Chopin and Delacroix, but also many other things—Proust—and the Louvre collection,” says the artist.

Elizabeth Peyton (b. 1965, Connecticut, U.S.; lives and works in Paris and New York) is known for her dynamic portraits, her unexpected collaborations, with her works appearing on magazine covers—such as the series of paintings depicting American actress Jennifer Lawrence—as well as in major public and private collections.

For two years, she and Kader Attia lived within the physical and imaginary spaces of the Louvre. Each of them had a studio on the museum grounds, where they created art, talked with museum staff, and interacted with the public.

Now, the results are on display for everyone to admire. For Attia, this takes the form of a film and an installation inspired by his own wanderings through the Louvre. For Peyton, it’s paintings and drawings: a mix of reinterpretations of works from the Louvre—which she has been creating since her early years as an artist—and depictions of historical and contemporary subjects, produced in her studio at the museum.

How Napoleon Became a Source of Inspiration for Peyton

Elizabeth Peyton had a revelation at the age of 21. She was reading Vincent Cronin’s biography of Napoleon and realized that a single person, through ideas and sheer will, can change the world for better or for worse, and that a portrait offers a way to capture both the person depicted and a piece of history.

The book was illustrated with a portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte by Antoine-Jean Gros, “Bonaparte at the Arcole Bridge,” from the Louvre’s collection. Peyton reproduced this work and was inspired to continue painting portraits. Forty years later, having maintained a studio in the museum for two years, she had the opportunity to roam the museum’s galleries, alone and mingling with the visitors. Her frequent visits and deep interest in the works on display in the galleries led her to spend many hours sketching and painting there. She created an engraving for the Louvre’s Engraving Workshop and worked alongside young artists from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris at the museum. Together, they copied works from the collection, which were exhibited at the Centre Pompidou-Metz. Throughout this time, she continued to paint figures that inspired her in her studio.

Attia and the Mirrors That Shift Perspective: A Different View of the Louvre

Kader Attia (b. 1970, Dugny; currently lives and works in Paris and Berlin) had an artistic revelation when he visited the Louvre as a teenager. He discovered the gallery dedicated to the “painters of reality,” featuring masterpieces by the Le Nain brothers and Georges de La Tour. Since then, he has created a body of work that combines sculpture, film, and installation art with critical reflection, curatorial practice, and theoretical writing.

During his stay at the Louvre, he led a guided tour for the public, organized a research seminar in collaboration with the museum’s teams, and delivered the lectures in the 2025 “Artists’ Lessons at the Louvre” series.

To mark the end of her two-year tenure as “host at the Louvre,” she created a film and a sculpture that explore her personal and political relationship with the museum, as well as an installation of mirrors that engages with the history of painting.

After many years spent working with shattered mirrors, in the work now on display at the Louvre he develops a new approach to reflections on the body and the gaze. Using convex mirrors and their distorted reflections, he orchestrates a choreography of bodies in which each visitor seeks their place within an unstable and distorted image that is nonetheless ever-present.

While ordinary mirrors encourage self-recognition, these mirrors create a sense of otherness: a slight disorientation that causes the viewer to question their own perspective. The reflection is constantly changing, reshaped from one second to the next and unique to that space.

The exhibition “Les Hôtes du Louvre: Kader Attia and Elizabeth Peyton” is open to the public through December 14, 2026.