1869 in art

Events

• January 30 – New British magazine Vanity Fair publishes the first of a long series of colour lithographic caricatures of public figures, initially by Carlo Pellegrini, portraying Benjamin Disraeli.
• January 31 – The Société Libre des Beaux-Arts publishes its manifesto.
• May 3 – The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1869 opens in London, held for the first time at Burlington House
• July 30 – Vincent van Gogh starts his apprenticeship with the art dealers Goupil & Cie in The Hague.
• December 4 – The weekly illustrated newspaper The Graphic is first published by engraver William Luson Thomas in London.

Works

• Lawrence Alma-Tadema – The Wine Shop
• Thomas Armstrong – The Hay Field
• Peter Nicolai Arbo – Valkyrie
• Thomas Armstrong – '
• Frédéric Bazille – Scène d'été
• Knud Bergslien – Birkebeiners on Skis Crossing the Mountain with the Royal Child
• Albert Bierstadt
• * Emigrants Crossing the Plains
• * Mount Hood
• William-Adolphe Bouguereau
• * The Elder Sister
• * The Knitting Girl
• Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux – La Danse
• Albert Charles Challen – Mary Seacole
• Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot – Femme Lisant
• Gustave Courbet – The Cliff at Etretat after the Storm
• Edgar Degas – Interior
• Lowes Cato Dickinson – Portrait of Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
• Gustave Doré – Andromeda
• Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Nouÿ – The supper of Beaucaire, 28 July 1793
• Luke Fildes – Houseless and Hungry
• Atkinson Grimshaw – '
• George P. A. Healy – Abraham Lincoln
• Jean-Jacques Henner – Woman on a Black Divan
• Daniel Huntington – Sowing the Word
• Frederick Richard Lee – Morning in the Meadows
• Frederic Leighton – Daedalus and Icarus
• Édouard Manet
• * The Balcony
• * Beach at Boulogne-sur-Mer
• * The Departure of the Folkestone Boat
• * The Execution of Emperor Maximilian
• * Moonlight over the Port of Boulogne
• * The Reading
• * Repose
• Claude Monet
• * Bathers at La Grenouillère
• * La Grenouillère
• * The Magpie
• Albert Joseph Moore
• * The Quartette
• * A Venus
• Gustave Moreau – Europa and the Bull
• Mihály Munkácsy – Last Day of a Condemned Man
• Erskine Nicol – A Nip Against the Cold
• Edward Poynter – Saint George for England
• Thomas Stuart Smith – The Pipe of Freedom
• Thomas Thornycroft – Statue of Richard Grosvenor, Second Marquess of Westminster
• W. L. Wyllie – ''Dawn after a Storm''

Births

• January 15 – Stanisław Wyspiański, Polish playwright, painter and designer
• February 7 – Xavier Martínez, Mexican-born American painter
• February 10 – Royal Cortissoz, American art critic
• March 1 – Pietro Canonica, Italian sculptor
• March 19 – Józef Mehoffer, Polish painter and decorative artist
• April 6
• * Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté, Canadian painter and sculptor
• * Louis Raemaekers, Dutch painter and cartoonist
• April 11 – Maximilian Liebenwein, Austrian painter and illustrator
• June 7 – Lamorna Birch, born Samuel John Birch, English painter
• June 21 – Zaida Ben-Yusuf, born Esther Zeghdda Ben Youseph Nathan, English-born American portrait photographer
• June 27 – Kate Carew, born Mary Williams, American caricaturist
• July 20 – Charles Pillet, French sculptor and engraver
• October 14 – Joseph Duveen, English art dealer
• October 22 – August Gaul, German sculptor
• November 21 – Zaida Ben-Yusuf, English-born American portrait photographer
• December 1 – Eligiusz Niewiadomski, Polish painter, critic and assassin
• December 18 – Edward Willis Redfield, American impressionist landscape painter
• December 31 – Henri Matisse, French painter date unknown – William Lee Hankey, English painter and illustrator

Deaths

• January 8 – Paul Huet, French painter
• June 10 – Frederick Yeates Hurlstone, English painter
• July 4
• * Johann Friedrich Overbeck, German painter
• * Édouard Pingret, French painter and lithographer
• July 10 – Jan Wnęk, Polish carpenter and sculptor
• August 26 – Baron Leys, Belgian painter
• August 8 – Roger Fenton, English photographer
• October 12 – François-Joseph Navez, Belgian neo-classical painter
• November 22 – William Hamlin, American engraver, first engraver for the state of Rhode Island
• December – Thomas Stuart Smith, Scottish painter
• December 8 – Samuel Jackson, English topographical painter, "father" of the Bristol School of painters
• December 29 – William Essex, English enamel-painter date unknown
• * Giuseppe Bisi, Italian painter, mainly of landscapes
• * Louis-Henri Brévière, French wood-engraver