1872 in France
Events from the year 1872 in France.
Incumbents
Events
- 22 May - Georges Bizet's comic opera Djamileh is premièred at the Opéra-Comique in Paris.
- 13 November - Claude Monet begins painting Impression, Sunrise as viewed from his hotel room at Le Havre.
- 27 November - Meteor shower display over France.
- Louis Ducos du Hauron creates an early color photograph.
- Chargeurs established as a shipping company.
- S. T. Dupont begins manufacture of luxury leather goods.
Art
- Gustave Courbet - Nature morte aux fruits
- Edgar Degas - Le Foyer de la danse à l'Opéra de la rue Le Peletier
- Gustave Doré - Le Christ quittant le prétoire
- Henri Fantin-Latour - Un coin de table
- Jean-Léon Gérôme - Pollice Verso
- Édouard Manet
- * Berthe Morisot au bouquet de violettes
- * Portrait de Clemenceau
- Claude Monet
- * Impression, soleil levant
- * Régates à Argenteuil
- * La Seine à Rouen
- * Printemps
- Berthe Morisot - Le Berceau
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir
- * Parisiennes habillées en Algériennes
- * Le Pont-Neuf
- Alfred Sisley
- * Le Pont de Villeneuve-la-Garenne
- * Le Canal Saint-Martin
- * Pêcheurs étendant leurs filets
- * Le Bac de l'île de la Loge, inondation
- * La Grand-Rue à Argenteuil
- * Rue de la Chaussée in Argenteuil
- * The Seine at Argenteuil
- * Villeneuve-la-Garenne
- Alfred Stevens - La parisienne japonaise
- James Tissot
- * An Interesting Story
- * Le Thé
Literature
- Alphonse Daudet - Tartarin de Tarascon
- Jules Verne
- *Aventures de trois Russes et de trois Anglais dans l'Afrique australe
- *Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours
- Émile Zola - ''La Curée''
Music
- Georges Bizet - L'Arlésienne
- Charles Gounod - Marche funèbre d'une marionnette
- Jules Massenet - Don César de Bazan
- Jacques Offenbach
- * Le roi Carotte
- * Fantasio
- Camille Saint-Saëns
- * Gavotte, Op. 23
- * Romance, Op. 37
Births
- 16 January - Henri Büsser, composer and conductor
- 18 January - Prince Emmanuel, Duke of Vendôme, noble from the House of Orléans
- 24 February - Gustave Sandras, artistic gymnast
- 26 March - Émile Armand, individualist anarchist
- 7 June - Rodolphe d'Erlanger, painter and musicologist
- 1 July - Louis Blériot, inventor, engineer and aviation pioneer
- 2 July - Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault, psychiatrist
- 15 July - Jean Dargassies, racing cyclist
- 28 July - Albert Sarraut, politician, twice Prime Minister of France
- 22 September - Octave Denis Victor Guillonnet, painter
- 17 October – Madeleine Rolland, translator and peace activist
- 30 November - Maurice de la Taille, priest and writer
- 12 December - Daniel Halévy, historian
Full date unknown
- Léon Bouly, inventor of the cinématographe
- François-Victor Équilbecq, author
- Colette Reynaud, feminist, socialist and pacifist journalist
Deaths
January to June
- 6 February - Auguste Joseph Alphonse Gratry, author and theologian
- 31 March - Jules Guyot, physician and agronomist
- 5 April - Paul Auguste Ernest Laugier, astronomer
- 28 April - Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard, photographer
- 20 June - Elie Frédéric Forey, Marshal of France
- 27 June - Michel Carré, librettist
July to December
- 5 July - Charles-Pierre Denonvilliers, surgeon
- 4 October - Jean-Jacques Bourassé, priest, archaeologist and historian
- 21 October - Jacques Babinet, physicist, mathematician and astronomer
- 23 October - Théophile Gautier, poet, novelist, journalist, dramatist and literary critic
- 29 October - Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant, chess master
- 6 December - Félix Archimède Pouchet, naturalist
- 10 December - Étienne Arnal, actor
- December - Jean-Baptiste Honoré Raymond Capefigue, historian and biographer