1780 in art

Events

• 1 May – The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1780 opens in London, the first to be held at the Academy's new headquarters at Somerset House

Works

• Antoine-François Callet – Portrait of the Comte de Vergennes
• John Singleton Copley – Portrait of Hugh Montgomerie
• Jacques-Louis David
• * Portrait of Count Stanislas Potocki
• * Saint Roch Interceding with the Virgin for the Plague-Stricken
• Thomas Gainsborough
• * Portrait of Henry Seymour Conway
• * Portrait of Jeffery Amherst
• Philip James de Loutherbourg – Warley Camp
• Jean-Pierre Norblin de La Gourdaine – Les Marionettes polonaises
• Francisco Goya – Christ Crucified
• Francis Holman – The moonlight Battle of Cape St Vincent, 16 January 1780
• Jacob More
• * Landscape with Classical Figures, Cicero at his Villa
• * Mount Vesuvius in Eruption: The Last Days of Pompeii
• Joshua Reynolds
• * Portrait of Sir William Chambers
• * Self-Portrait
• John Trumbull – George Washington
• Francis Wheatley – The Irish House of Commons
• Johann Zoffany
• *
• * Portrait of Tipu Sultan

Births

• January 10 – Pieter Christoffel Wonder, Dutch painter active in England
• February 15 – Alfred Edward Chalon, Swiss portrait painter
• February 18 – Alexey Venetsianov, Russian genre painter
• April 14 – Edward Hicks, American folk artist
• June 12 – Henry Hoppner Meyer, English portrait painter
• August 8 – Étienne Bouhot, French painter and art teacher
• August 29 – Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, French Neoclassical painter
• September – Samuel Colman, English painter
• September 15 – Johann Peter Krafft, German-Austrian painter
• October 26 – Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard, French painter and sculptor in the troubadour style date unknown
• * Johann Adam Ackermann, German landscape painter
• * Giovacchino Cantini, Italian engraver
• * Jan Krzysztof Damel, Lithuanian neoclassicist painter

Deaths

• February 14 – Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, French draftsman, printmaker, etcher and painter
• February 21 – Francesco Foschi, Italian landscape painter
• March 3 – Joseph Highmore, British portrait and historical painter
• May 6 – Gaspare Bazzani, Italian painter active in Reggio as a painter of vedute or landscapes
• July 11 – Luis Egidio Meléndez, Spanish still-life painter
• September 6 – Françoise Basseporte, French court painter
• September 7 – Pieter Barbiers, Dutch painter
• October 17 – Bernardo Bellotto, Italian urban landscape painter or vedutista, and printmaker in etching date unknown
• * James Giles, British porcelain decorator
• * Dionigi Valesi, Italian printmaker active in Verona and Venice probable
• * Robert Hunter, Irish painter
• * Nicolas Jean Baptiste Poilly, French draftsman and engraver
• * Rocco Pozzi, Italian painter and engraver
• * Wenceslaus Werlin, Austrian portrait artist