1863 in art

Events

• March – American-born painter James McNeill Whistler settles close to the River Thames in Chelsea, London, where he will live for most of the rest of his life.
• May 4 – The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1863 opens at the National Gallery in London
• June 12 – The Arts Club is founded by Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Frederic Leighton and others in London's Mayfair as a social meeting place for those involved or interested in the creative arts.
• The École des Beaux-Arts in Paris becomes independent of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.
• Julia Margaret Cameron takes up photography.
• Alexander Gilchrist's Life of William Blake, "Pictor Ignotus" is published in London, edited posthumously by Anne Gilchrist.

Exhibitions

• May 17 – Opening of first exhibition of the Salon des Refusés in Paris, and coining of the term avant-garde.

Works

• Peter Nicolai Arbo – Horse Herd on the High Mountains
• Thomas Jones Barker – '
• Albert Bierstadt – The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak
• David Gilmour Blythe
• * Libby Prison
• * Man Eating in a Field
• Alexey Bogolyubov – Easter procession in Yaroslavl
• John Brett – Florence from Bellosguardo
• Alexandre Cabanel – The Birth of Venus
• Paul Cézanne – The Judgement of Paris
• Charles Camille Chazal – Institution of the Eucharist
• François-Claudius Compte-Calix – Vieil Ami
• Pierre Puvis de Chavannes – Work
• Joseph Durham – Memorial to the Great Exhibition, London
• Thomas Charles Farrer – A Buckwheat Field on Thomas Cole's Farm
• Jean-Léon Gérôme – Dance of the Almeh
• Jozef Israëls – Fishermen's Children
• Italian – The Veiled Nun
• Vilhelm Kyhn – Efter solnedgang i udkanten af en landsby
• Édouard Manet
• * Le déjeuner sur l'herbe
• * Olympia
• * ‘’Young Woman Reclining in Spanish Costume’’
• Robert Braithwaite Martineau – The Last Chapter
• Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier – Napoleon III at the Battle of Solferino
• John Everett Millais
• * The Eve of St Agnes
• * My First Sermon
• Albert Joseph Moore – Wall decorations at Coombe Abbey
• Elisabet Ney – Eilhard Mitscherlich
• Vincent Pilz – Pegasus '
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Joan of Arc Kissing the Sword of Deliverance
• Marcus Stone – On the Road from Waterloo to Paris
• James Tissot – The Two Sisters
• Eugene von Guerard – North-east View from the Northern Top of Mount Kosciusko
• Frederick Walker – The Lost Path
• Edward Matthew Ward – Hogarth's Studio in 1739
• James McNeill Whistler – ''Grey and Silver: Old Battersea Reach''

Births

• January 11 – Mary Tannahill, American painter and artist in fabrics
• January 29 – Suzette Holten, née Skovgaard, Danish painter and ceramist
• April 3 – Henry van de Velde, Belgian painter, architect and designer, co-founder of the Art Nouveau movement
• May 17 – C. R. Ashbee, English designer
• June 12 – Bertram Mackennal, Australian sculptor
• June 16 – Arturo Michelena, Venezuelan painter
• June 21 – Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen, née Brodersen, Danish sculptor
• June 27 – Henri Beau, Canadian Impressionist painter
• August 30 – Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, Russian color photographer
• September 6 – Jessie Willcox Smith, American illustrator
• October 24 – Bertha Jaques, American etcher
• November 11 – Paul Signac, French neo-Impressionist painter
• December 5 – George Pirie, Scottish painter
• December 12 – Edvard Munch, Norwegian painter

Deaths

• January 6 – Harriet Gouldsmith, English landscape painter and etcher
• January 17 – Horace Vernet, French painter of battles, portraits, and Orientalist Arab subjects
• February 6 – Karl Ludwig Frommel, German landscape painter and engraver
• February 16 – Alvan Fisher, American pioneer in landscape painting and genre works
• February 20 – John Cart Burgess, English watercolour painter of flowers and landscapes
• April 4 – Ludwig Emil Grimm, German painter and engraver
• June 5 – Marie Ellenrieder, German painter
• July 7 – William Mulready, Irish genre painter of rural scenes
• July 12 – Étienne-Jean Delécluze, French painter and critic
• August 13 – Eugène Delacroix, French Romantic painter
• September 19 – Joseph Nigg – Austrian painter, with painting on porcelain a specialty
• December 4 – James Duffield Harding, English landscape painter
• December 10 – Charles C. Ingham, Irish portrait painter and founder of the New York National Academy of Design
• December 27 – Maria Martin, American watercolor painter date unknown
• * Tommaso Benedetti, Austrian painter
• * Per Krafft the Younger, Swedish portrait and historical painter
• * Nukina Kaioku, Japanese painter and calligrapher
• * Johannes Baptista van Acker, Flemish portrait miniature painter