1865 in art

Events

• February–April – Alexander Gardner photographs Abraham Lincoln and his assassins.
• July 21 – Charles Dodgson photographs Effie Gray Millais, John Everett Millais, and their daughters Effie and Mary at 7 Cromwell Place, London.
• Ford Madox Brown completes his painting Work after thirteen years.
• Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. install the stained-glass east window in the chapel of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, England, designed by Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and Philip Webb.
• Édouard Manet's painting Olympia is first exhibited, at the Salon (Paris), and causes controversy.
• Jean-François Millet's painting The Angelus is first exhibited and becomes very popular in France.
• The Bargello in Florence becomes an art museum.

Works

• Lawrence Alma-Tadema – An Egyptian at his Doorway
• John Ballantyne – Sir Edwin Landseer in His Studio
• Albert Bierstadt
• * Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California
• * Staubbach Falls, near Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland
• Ford Madox Brown – Work
• Constantino Brumidi – The Apotheosis of Washington
• Augustus Burke – Connemara Girl
• Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris – The Crucifixion
• Frederic Edwin Church – Aurora Borealis
• Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot – Ville d'Avray
• Gustave Courbet
• * Portrait of Countess Karoly
• * Le ruisseau noir
• Honoré Daumier – The Third-Class Carriage
• Edgar Degas – Medieval War Scene, his first painting exhibited at the Salon (Paris)
• Thomas Faed – The Last of the Clan
• William Powell Frith
• * Mary Elizabeth Maxwell
• * The Marriage of the Prince of Wales
• Jean-Léon Gérôme – Prayer
• Henri Harpignies – Les Corbeaux
• Henry Holiday – Stained glass windows for chapel of Worcester College, Oxford
• Winslow Homer – The Veteran in a New Field
• Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann – A Wounded Danish Soldier
• Edwin Landseer – Lady Godiva's Prayer
• Andrew and George Anderson Lawson – Wellington's Column, Liverpool
• Benjamin Williams Leader – Autumn's Last Gleam
• Edward Lear – Jerusalem
• Thomas Le Clear – Interior with Portraits
• Édouard Manet
• * Angélina
• * Bull-Fighting Scene
• * The Mocking of Christ
• * The Tragic Actor (Rouvière as Hamlet)
• George Hemming Mason –
• Adolph Menzel – The Coronation of King William I in Königsberg 1861
• John Everett Millais
• * Esther
• * Waking
• Aimé Millet – Vercingétorix monument
• Henry Moore – The Rainbow
• Gustave Moreau – Thracian Girl Carrying the Head of Orpheus on His Lyre
• Edward Poynter – Faithful Unto Death
• Val Prinsep – The Lady of the Tooti-Nameh or The legend of the parrot
• Illarion Pryanishnikov – Jokers: Gostiny Dvor in Moscow
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti – The Blue Bower
• Alfred Sisley – Avenue of Chestnut Trees near La Celle-Saint-Cloud
• John Tenniel – illustrations to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
• S. S. Teulon – Buxton Memorial Fountain
• James McNeill Whistler – Rose and Silver: The Princess from the Land of Porcelain
• Franz Xaver Winterhalter – Portrait of Franz Joseph I
• Thomas Woolner – Godley Statue

Births

• January 19 – Valentin Serov, Russian portrait painter
• January 23 – Connie Gilchrist, English child actress and model
• April 26 – Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Finnish painter
• May 5 – Albert Aurier, French poet, art critic and painter, devoted to Symbolism
• June 25 – Robert Henri, American painter, leader of the Ash Can School
• June 26 – Bernard Berenson, Lithuanian-born American art historian
• June 28 – David Young Cameron, Scottish painter
• August 2 – John Radecki, Polish-born Australian stained glass artist
• August 20 – Frank DuMond, American painter, illustrator and teacher
• September 23 – Suzanne Valadon, French artists' model and painter
• November 11 – Donatus Buongiorno, Italian-born American painter
• December 28 – Félix Vallotton, Swiss painter and graphic artist date unknown – Adelaïde Alsop Robineau, American painter and potter

Deaths

• January 10 – William Fox-Strangways, 4th Earl of Ilchester, English diplomat and art collector
• January 12 – Kunisada, Japanese designer of ukiyo-e woodblock prints
• January 19 – Clementina Maude, Viscountess Hawarden, British portrait photographer
• January 21 – Johan Erik Lindh, Swedish painter and former decorative painter who moved to Finland
• January 23 – Joseph-Désiré Court, French painter of historical subjects and portraits
• February 21 – Constant Troyon, French painter
• March 8 – Gerard Bilders, Dutch painter
• April 21 – Josef Matěj Navrátil, Czech painter of murals and frescoes
• April 28 – Robert William Sievier, English engraver, sculptor and inventor
• June 18 – Antoine Wiertz, Belgian painter
• July 11 – Ammi Phillips, American folk portrait painter
• August 14 – Fitz Henry Lane, American Luminist marine painter
• August 23 – Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Austrian painter and writer
• September 17 – John Neagle, American portrait painter
• September 23 – John Frederick Herring, Sr., English painter, signmaker and coachman in Victorian England
• September 29 – François Joseph Heim, French painter
• November 1 – Charles-François Lebœuf, French sculptor
• December 24 – Charles Lock Eastlake, English painter and art collector date unknown
• * Tivadar Alconiere, Hungarian painter
• * Michael Hanhart, English lithographer and chromolithographer