1851 in art

Events

• March – English sculptor Frederick Scott Archer makes public the wet plate collodion photographic process.
• May 1 – The Great Exhibition opens at Crystal Palace, London. Works of art on display include the Tara Brooch, handicrafts and ornaments by the Sindhis, an electrotype of John Evan Thomas' sculpture Death of Tewdric Mawr, King of Gwent, and a demonstration by makers of Bristol blue glass.
• May 5 – The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1851 opens at the National Gallery in London
• Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo opens in Brescia, Italy.
• Missions Héliographiques established by Prosper Mérimée to photograph historical French architecture.

Works

• Edward Hodges Baily – Peel Memorial, Bury
• John Bell – sculptures at The Great Exhibition
• * Andromeda
• * The Eagle Slayer
• * Una and the Lion
• Charles Allston Collins
• * Convent Thoughts
• * May, in the Regent's Park
• Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot – La Danse des Nymphes
• William Powell Frith – Hogarth Brought Before the Governor of Calais as a Spy
• Jean-Léon Gérôme - Black Panther Stalking a Herd of Deer
• Francesco Hayez
• * Antonietta Tarsis Basilico
• * Matilde Juva-Branca
• * La Meditazione
• William Holman Hunt – The Hireling Shepherd
• John Prescott Knight – Portrait of Charles Barry
• Sir Edwin Landseer
• * Monarch of the Glen
• * Scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream
• Frederick Richard Lee – Shattered Oak in Bedfordshire
• Emanuel Leutze – Washington Crossing the Delaware
• Daniel Maclise – Caxton Showing the First Specimen of His Printing to King Edward IV at the Almonry, Westminster
• John Jabez Edwin Mayall – The Lord's Prayer
• John Everett Millais
• * The Bridesmaid
• * Mariana
• * The Return of the Dove to the Ark
• Karl Heinrich Möller – Athena Arms the Warrior
• Stephen Pearce – The Arctic Council Planning a Search for Sir John Franklin
• Soma Orlai Petrich – The Corpse of Louis II
• Richard Redgrave – The Outcast
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Beatrice Meeting Dante at a Marriage Feast, Denies him her Salutation
• Théophile Schuler – The Chariot of Death
• Rebecca Solomon – The Governess
• Clarkson Stanfield – Trajan's Arch, Ancona
• John Thomas – Charity
• Franz Xaver Winterhalter – ''The First of May 1851''

Publications

• John Leech – The Comic History of Rome
• Edward Lear – Journal of a Landscape Painter in Albania
• John Ruskin – ''Pre-Raphaelitism''

Births

• January 17 – A. B. Frost, American illustrator
• January 28 – Andreas Aubert, Norwegian art historian
• February 3 – Wilhelm Trübner, German realist painter
• April 19 – Đorđe Krstić, one of the leading three Serbian Realist painters
• July 5 – William Lionel Wyllie, English marine painter
• July 23 – Peder Severin Krøyer, Norwegian painter
• October 2 – Francesco Paolo Michetti, Italian painter
• October 13 – Charles Sprague Pearce, American painter
• November 21 – Leslie Ward, English caricaturist
• December 20 – Thérèse Schwartze, Dutch portrait painter

Deaths

• January 9
• * Michel Martin Drolling, French painter of history and portraits
• * Johannes Hermanus Koekkoek, Dutch painter and draughtsman
• January 27 – John James Audubon, Haitian-born American naturalist and painter
• March 10 – Abraham Constantin, Swiss enamel painter
• April 7 – Henry Thomas Alken, English engraver, illustrator and sporting artist
• April 8 – John Henning, Scottish sculptor and medallist
• July 10 – Louis Daguerre, French inventor of daguerreotype photography
• July 11 – Benjamin Duterrau, French painter and engraver
• October 25 – Giorgio Pullicino, Maltese painter and architect
• October 29 – William Wyon, English chief engraver at the Royal Mint
• November – Willis Buell, American politician and portrait painter
• December 6 – John Buckler, English draughtsman and engraver
• December 19 – J. M. W. Turner, English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker