1881 in art

Events

• April – Sixth Impressionist exhibition in Paris, at Nadar's studio.
• May 2 – The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1881 opens at Burlington House in London
• August 31 – English painters Thomas Cooper Gotch and Caroline Burland Yates marry at Newlyn.
• The Société des Artistes Français is established, with William-Adolphe Bouguereau as its first president.
• Vincent van Gogh returns from study in Brussels to his parents' home in Etten (Netherlands) where he produces a number of early works, including the start of his series of peasant character studies and still lifes (including Still Life with Straw Hat).

• Art Gallery of South Australia established in Adelaide.
• St. Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts established at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, under the direction of Halsey Ives.
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Ballads and Sonnets published.

Works

• Lawrence Alma-Tadema
  • The Tepidarium
  • Sappho and Alcaeus
• Marie Bashkirtseff – The Studio
• Jules Bastien-Lepage – Pauvre Fauvette
• Alfred Boucher – La Piété Filiale (sculpture)
• Frank Bramley – A Hopeless Dawn
• Lady Butler – Scotland Forever!
• Gustave Caillebotte - The Bezique Game (La partie de Bésigue)
• Paul Cézanne – Self-portrait with olive wallpaper
• Pierre Puvis de Chavannes – The Poor Fisherman (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)
• John Collier
  • Charles Darwin
  • Sir George Jessel
• Edgar Degas
  • Little Dancer of Fourteen Years (sculpture)
  • Trotting Horse (California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco)
• Stanhope Forbes – A Street in Brittany
• Aleksander Gierymski – Jewess with Oranges
• Atkinson Grimshaw
  • Boar Lane, Leeds
  • Shipping on the Clyde
• Ralph Hedley – John Graham Lough in His Studio
• Jean-Jacques Henner – Saint Jerome
• Max Klinger – Paraphrases about the Finding of a Glove (etchings, printed)
• Benjamin Williams Leader – February Fill Dyke
• Frederic Leighton
  • Bianca
  • Whispers
• Juan Luna – The Death of Cleopatra
• Édouard Manet
  • Dead Eagle Owl
  • Le Suicidé
• Luc-Olivier Merson – Nôtre-Dame de Paris
• Hendrik Willem Mesdag – Panorama Mesdag
• John Everett Millais
  • Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli
  • Portrait of Alfred Tennyson
• Claude Monet - Waves Breaking
• Albert Joseph Moore
  • Blossoms
  • Yellow Marguerites
• Hjalmar Munsterhjelm – Woodland Pool by Moonlight
• Giovanni Muzzioli – In the Temple of Bacchus
• Jean-François Raffaëlli – Les déclassés (The Absinthe Drinkers)
• Vinnie Ream – Admiral David G. Farragut (bronze, Washington, D.C.)

• Pierre-Auguste Renoir
  • Bay of Naples, Evening
  • Blonde Bather (first version)
  • Luncheon of the Boating Party
  • Pink and Blue
• Ilya Repin
  • Polina Strepetova as Lizaveta
  • Portrait of Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Found (work finished but never completed)
• Augustus Saint-Gaudens – Admiral David Glasgow Farragut (bronze, Manhattan)
• John Singer Sargent – Dr. Samuel Jean Pozzi at Home
• Henryk Siemiradzki – The Sword Dance
• William Stott of Oldham – Le Passeur ("The Ferry", Tate Britain)
• Henry Jones Thaddeus – La retour du bracconier (The Wounded Poacher)
• James Tissot – Goodbye, on the Mersey
• Viktor Vasnetsov
  • Alenushka
  • Three Tsarevnas of the Underground Kingdom
• James McNeill Whistler – Portrait of Lady Meux in two completed versions:
  • Arrangement in Black, No. 5
  • Harmony in Pink and Grey

Births

• January 4 – Wilhelm Lehmbruck, German sculptor (suicide 1919)
• January 5 – Pablo Gargallo, Aragonese painter and sculptor (died 1934)
• February 4 – Fernand Léger, French painter (died 1955)
• February 11
  • Carlo Carrà, Italian painter (died 1966)
  • Robert Borlase Smart, English painter and critic (died 1947)
• April 10 – William John Leech, Irish painter (died 1968)
• April 16 – Fortunino Matania, Italian-born illustrator and war artist (died 1963)
• July 12 – Natalia Goncharova, Russian theatrical costume and set designer, painter and illustrator (died 1962)
• July 28 – Léon Spilliaert, Belgian symbolist painter and graphic artist (died 1946)
• July 29 – Jessie Traill, Australian printmaker (died 1967)
• August 4 – Wenzel Hablik, Bohemian painter, graphic artist, designer (died 1934)
• October 4 - René Gimpel, French artbdealer (died 1945)
• October 25 – Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter, draughtsman and sculptor (died 1973)
• December 8 – Albert Gleizes, French painter (died 1953)
• December 31 – Max Pechstein, German painter (died 1955)
• uncertain
  • William Conor, Irish painter (died 1968)
  • Nazmi Ziya Güran, Turkish painter (died 1937)

Deaths

• January 3 – Anna McNeill Whistler, "Whistler's Mother" (born 1804)
• January 24 – James Collinson, English Pre-Raphaelite painter (born 1825)
• February 9 – Jacques-Édouard Gatteaux, French sculptor and medal engraver (born 1788)
• March 11 – Thomas Brigstocke, Welsh portrait painter (born 1809)
• May 24 – Samuel Palmer, English painter, etcher and lithographer (born 1805)
• July 25 – Edward Charles Williams, English landscape painter (born 1807)
• December 6 – Thomas Skinner, English etcher (poisoned; born 1819)
• December 13 – John Quidor, American painter (born 1801)
• December 14 – Berndt Godenhjelm, Finnish painter (born 1799)
• December 21 - Francesco Hayez, Italian historical, portrait and political painter (born 1791)

References

References

1. "Impressionist Exhibitions in Paris (1874-86)".
2. (2004). "The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature". Oxford University Press.
3. (17 August 2020). "Waves Breaking - Claude Monet".
4. "Bay of Naples, Evening".
5. Sharp, Jane A.. (2000). "Amazons of the Avant-Garde: Alexandra Exter, Natalia Goncharova, Liubov Popova, Olga Rozanova, Varvara Stepanova, and Nadezhda Udaltsova". Guggenheim Museum.