1866 in art

Events

• May 7 – The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1866 opens at the National Gallery in London
• July 28 – 18-year-old Vinnie Ream is commissioned by the United States Congress to make a marble statue of Abraham Lincoln for the United States Capitol rotunda in Washington, D.C.
• Following the death of Charles Lock Eastlake, Edwin Landseer is elected as the new President of the Royal Academy. After Landseer refuses the position, the portraitist Francis Grant becomes president
• Nationalmuseum opens in new premises in Stockholm, Sweden, under this name.
• Théophile Thoré-Bürger publishes the first catalogue raisonné of Vermeer's paintings, in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, bringing him to international prominence after nearly two centuries.

Works

• Albert Bierstadt – A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie
• Carl Bloch – In a Roman Osteria
• Odoardo Borrani – At the Chorus
• Edward Burne-Jones – The Princess Sabra Led to the Dragon
• Julia Margaret Cameron – photographs
• * The Mountain Nymph Sweet Liberty
• * Series of Life Sized Heads
• Paul Cézanne – Portrait of Louis-Auguste Cézanne, Father of the Artist, reading l'Evénement
• Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot – Agostina
• Gustave Courbet
• * L'Origine du monde
• * Le Sommeil
• Edgar Degas – Scene from the Steeplechase: The Fallen Jockey
• Gustav Doré
• * Illustrations for La Grande Bible de Tours
• * Illustrations for Milton's Paradise Lost
• Giovanni Fattori – La Rotonda di Palmieri
• Jean-Léon Gérôme
• * Cleopatra and Caesar
• * The Slave Market
• Francesco Hayez – Odalisque with Book
• David Octavius Hill – The First General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, Signing the Act of Separation and Deed of Demission at Tanfield, Edinburgh 23 May 1843
• Winslow Homer – Prisoners from the Front
• Edwin Landseer –
• * The Arab Tent
• * Queen Victoria at Osborne
• August Malmström – Dancing Fairies
• Édouard Manet
• * The Fifer
• * A King Charles Spaniel
• * Still Life with Melon and Peaches
• * Woman with a Parrot
• Jan Matejko – Rejtan, or the Fall of Poland
• Claude Monet
• * Camille
• * Le déjeuner sur l’herbe
• * Women in the Garden
• Albert Joseph Moore
• * The Last Supper and The Feeding of the Five Thousand
• * The Shunamite relating the Glories of King Solomon to her Maidens
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir – Mother Anthony's Tavern
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti – The Beloved
• Rebecca Solomon – A Wounded Dove
• Simeon Solomon – Love in Autumn
• Bertalan Székely – The Battle of Mohács
• Frederick Walker – Wayfarers
• John Quincy Adams Ward – ''Indian Hunter''

Births

• January 17 – Joseph Bernard, French sculptor
• January 23 – Lydia Field Emmet, American painter and designer
• February 26 – Milly Childers, English painter
• March 17 – Alice Austen, American photographer
• May 11 – Clare Atwood, English painter
• June 13 – Aby Warburg, German art historian
• June 16 – Joaquín Clausell, Mexican impressionist landscape painter, lawyer and political activist
• July 3 – Ambroise Vollard, French art dealer
• July 14 – Juliette Wytsman, Belgian painter
• July 19 – John Duncan, Scottish painter
• July 28 – Beatrix Potter, English writer and illustrator
• August 9 – Emil Fuchs, Austrian-born sculptor and painter
• August 13 – Jadwiga Golcz, Polish photographer
• August 31 – Georg Jensen, Danish silversmith
• October 2 – Charles Ricketts, English designer

Deaths

• January 15 – Massimo d'Azeglio, Italian statesman, novelist and painter
• January 17 – George Petrie, Irish painter, musician, antiquary and archaeologist
• January 27 – John Gibson, Welsh-born sculptor
• January 30 – Léon Bonvin, French painter an watercolorist
• March 23 – Ferdinand von Arnim, German architect and watercolour painter
• April 1 – Chester Harding, American portrait painter
• April 3 – Frederick William Fairholt, English engraver
• April 7 – Thomas Musgrave Joy, English portrait painter
• April 17 – Carl Georg Enslen, Austrian painter
• April 24 – Giuseppe Tominz, Austrian portrait painter
• April 26 – Hermann Goldschmidt, German-born painter and astronomer
• June 8 – William Bewick, English portrait painter
• June 14 – John Hayes, English portrait-painter
• August 9 – Raffaello Sernesi, Italian painter and medallist
• September 10 – David Hay, British interior decorator
• November 23 – Paul Gavarni, French caricaturist
• December 20 – Jacobus Cornelis Gaal, Dutch painter and etcher date unknown – Jean Henri De Coene, Belgian painter of genre and historical subjects