1881 in art

Events

• 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).

William Powell Frith – A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881 (1883)

• 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.^[1]

Works

• Lawrence Alma-Tadema
  • In 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!
• Paul Cézanne – Self-portrait with olive wallpaper
• Pierre Puvis de Chavannes – The Poor Fisherman (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)
• 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
• Atkinson Grimshaw – 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
• 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
• Albert Joseph Moore
  • Blossoms
  • Yellow Marguerites
• Giovanni Muzzioli – In the Temple of Bacchus
• Vinnie Ream – Admiral David G. Farragut (bronze)

Renoir - Luncheon of the Boating Party

• Pierre-Auguste Renoir
  • 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)
• 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 (committed 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)
• April 10 – William John Leech, Irish painter (died 1968)
• July 29 – Jessie Traill, Australian printmaker (died 1967)
• August 4 – Wenzel Hablik, Bohemian painter, graphic artist, designer (died 1934)
• 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)

Deaths

• January 3 – Anna McNeill Whistler, "Whistler's Mother" (born 1804)
• January 24 – James Collinson, 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, painter, etcher and lithographer (born 1805)
• July 25 – Edward Charles Williams, landscape painter (born 1807)
• December 13 – John Quidor, painter (born 1801)
• December 14 – Berndt Godenhjelm, Finnish painter (born 1799)
• December 21 - Francesco Hayez, Italian historical, portrait and political painter (born 1791)

References