1739 in art

Events

• Royal sculptor Edme Bouchardon is commissioned to design the Fontaine des Quatre-Saisons in Paris. This year also he presents the first model of Cupid Fashioning a Bow out of the Club of Hercules.

Paintings

• Francis Bindon – Portrait of Dean Jonathan Swift
• François Boucher – The Breakfast
• Joseph Parrocel – Saint Francis Regis Interceding for the Plague Victims
• Antoine Pesne – Portrait of Frederick the Great as Crown Prince
• Francesco Carlo Rusca – Portrait of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
• Paul Troger – ''Apotheosis of Charles VI as Apollo''

Births

• February 23 - Peter Adolf Hall, Swedish-French artist primarily of miniature paintings
• ?August – Francis Towne, English water-colour painter
• August 21 – Mariano Salvador Maella, Spanish painter and engraver
• October 3 – Valentine Green, engraver date unknown
• * Antoine Cardon, also known as Cardon the Elder, Belgian painter, portraitist and engraver
• * Nicolas Benjamin Delapierre, French artist
• * Kitao Shigemasa, Japanese ukiyo-e artist from Edo
• * Giuseppe Levati, Italian painter and designer of the late-Baroque and Neoclassicism period probable – Deng Shiru, Chinese calligrapher during the Qing Dynasty

Deaths

• January 20 – Francesco Galli Bibiena, Italian architect/designer/painter
• March 31 – Magnus Berg, Norwegian painter, woodcarver, sculptor and non-fiction writer
• April 23 - Andrey Matveyev, Russian portraitist
• April 27 – Pierre Imbert Drevet, French portrait engraver
• May 10 – Cosmas Damian Asam, German Baroque painter and architect
• June 27 – Thomas Wedgwood III, potter
• July 15 – Juan Ramírez Mejandre, Spanish Baroque sculptor
• December 23 – John Vanderbank, English portrait painter and book illustrator date unknown
• * Charles Jervas, Irish portrait painter, translator, and art collector
• * Carlo Moscatiello, Italian painter of quadratura