1871 in art

Events

• March – Edward Lear settles at his villa in Sanremo.
• Spring – James McNeill Whistler publishes Sixteen etchings of scenes on the Thames and paints his first "moonlights" (later called "nocturnes") of the river.
• December – Claude Monet and his wife Camille move to Argenteuil.
• Camille Pissarro marries and moves to Pontoise.
• William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti become tenants of Kelmscott Manor, which they share with Jane Morris.
• Marie Spartali marries William James Stillman.
• Edwin B. Crocker establishes the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California.

Works

Whistler's Mother

• Antonio Ciseri – Ecce Homo
• Thomas Eakins – Max Schmitt in a Single Scull
• Martin Johnson Heade – Cattleya Orchid and Three Hummingbirds
• Frank Holl – No Tidings from the Sea
• Daniel Huntington – The Narrows, Lake George
• Eastman Johnson – The Old Stagecoach
• Ivan Kramskoi – The Mermaids
• Édouard Manet
  • The Harbour at Bordeaux (E.G. Bührle collection, Zürich)
  • The Barricade (Civil War) (Szepmuveseti Muzeum, Budapest)
• John Everett Millais – Victory O Lord!
• Claude Monet – A Windmill at Zaandam
• Albert Joseph Moore – Sea Gulls
• Camille Pissarro – Lordship Lane Station, Upper Norwood
• Vinnie Ream – Abraham Lincoln (marble, United States Capitol rotunda, Washington, D.C.)
• Randolph Rogers – Abraham Lincoln (bronze, Philadelphia)
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti
  • Dante's Dream
  • Pandora
• George Blackall Simonds – The Falconer sculpture
• Vasily Vereshchagin
  • At the city wall: "Let them in!"
  • The Apotheosis of War
• Alfred Waud – A Home on the Mississippi
• James McNeill Whistler
  • Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1 ("Whistler's Mother")
  • Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Chelsea
  • Symphony in Grey: Early Morning, Thames
  • Variations in Pink And Grey – Chelsea
  • Variations in Violet and Green – Chelsea

Births

• March 2 – Albert Herter, painter (died 1950)
• March 9 – Granville Redmond, painter (died 1935)
• April 11 – Theodor Pallady, painter (died 1956)
• May ? – Elinor Darwin, née Monsell, engraver and portrait painter (died 1954)
• May 1 – Miklós Ligeti, sculptor (died 1944)
• May 27 – Georges Rouault, Expressionist painter and stained glass artist (died 1958)
• July 24 – Giacomo Balla, painter (died 1958)
• August 22 – Émile André, architect and designer (died 1933)
• October 26 – Guillermo Kahlo, photographer (died 1941)
• date unknown – Peter Moog, outsider artist (died 1930)

Deaths

• January 1 – Alexander Munro, Pre-Raphaelite sculptor (born 1825)
• January 14 – Eduardo Zamacois y Zabala, painter (b. 1841)
• January 18 – Sir George Hayter, English painter, specialising in portraits (born 1792)
• January 19 – Henri Regnault, painter (born 1843)
• February 8 – Moritz von Schwind, painter (born 1804)
• February 20 – Paul Kane, Irish-Canadian painter (born 1810)
• February 26 – Sophia Hawthorne, painter and illustrator (born 1809)
• March 3 – Michael Thonet, furniture designer (born 1796)
• March – Emma Fürstenhoff, Swedish florist (born 1802)
• April 24 – Charles Girardet, painter (born 1813)
• June 9 – Anna Atkins, botanist and pioneer photographer (born 1799)
• July 30 – Edwin Wilkins Field, lawyer and painter (born 1804)
• October 14 – Johan Frederik Møller, Danish painter and photographer (born 1797)
• December 9 – Josef Mánes, painter (born 1820)
• December 21 – Paul Guigou, painter (born 1834)
• date unknown
  • Johann Fischbach, painter of landscapes and genre arts (born 1797)
  • Emma Eleonora Kendrick, British miniature painter (born 1788)