1872 in art

Events

• February 20 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens in New York City.
• May 5 – The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1872 begins at Burlington House in London
• June – American-born painter James McNeill Whistler exhibits Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother, painted the previous year, at the 104th Royal Academy summer exhibition in London after the curator Sir William Boxall threatens to resign from the R.A. if it is rejected.
• November 13 – Claude Monet begins painting Impression, Sunrise as viewed from his hotel room at Le Havre.
• November – Edward Lear acquires his cat Foss.
• date unknown
• *William De Morgan sets up an art pottery in Chelsea, London.
• *The first "Wallace fountains", to the design of sculptor Charles-Auguste Lebourg, are installed in Paris.
• *Lise Tréhot last models for Renoir.

Works

• Peter Nicolai Arbo – The Wild Hunt of Odin
• Arnold Böcklin – Self-portrait with Death playing the fiddle
• Caspar Buberl – Fulton Memorial
• Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
• * Hope
• * The White Rocks
• Giuseppe De Nittis – The Road from Naples to Brindisi
• Edgar Degas
• * Lorenzo Pagans and Auguste De Gas
• * The Ballet Scene from Meyerbeer's Opera "Robert le Diable"
• Gustave Doré – illustrations to London: A Pilgrimage
• Frank Duveneck – The Whistling Boy
• William Powell Frith – The Fair Toxophilites
• John Gast – American Progress
• Jean-Léon Gérôme – Pollice Verso
• Ivan Kramskoi
• * Christ in the Desert
• * Old Man with a crutch
• Henri Fantin-Latour – The Corner of the Table
• Jules Joseph Lefebvre – The Grasshopper
• Édouard Manet
• * Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets
• * Berthe Morisot with a Fan
• * Berthe Morisot
• * Le chemin de fer
• * Racecourse in the Bois de Boulogne
• Claude Monet
• * Effet de Brouillard
• * Impression, Sunrise
• * Springtime
• Thomas Moran – The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
• Berthe Morisot
• * The Cradle
• * On the Balcony
• Vasily Perov
• * Portrait of Fyodor Dostoevsky
• * Portrait of Vladimir Dal
• Illarion Pryanishnikov – Empties
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• * Claude Monet Reading
• * Parisian Women in Algerian Costume (The Harem)
• * Le Pont-Neuf
• * Woman with Parasol Seated in the Garden
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Beata Beatrix
• Emil Jakob Schindler – The Steamer station on the Danube opposite Kaisermühlen
• Alfred Sisley
• * Bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garonne
• * Footbridge at Argenteuil
• Marcus Stone – Edward II and his favourite, Piers Gaveston
• James Tissot
• * Bad News
• * An Interesting Story
• Wilhelm Trübner – Auf dem Kanapee
• Frederick Walker –
• James McNeill Whistler – Arrangement in Gray: Portrait of the Painter
• Mårten Eskil Winge – ''Thor's Fight with the Giants''

Births

• January 16 – Edward Gordon Craig, English theatrical designer
• January 25 – Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, English painter
• February 25 – Alice Bailly Swiss painter and multimedia artist
• March 7 – Piet Mondrian, Dutch painter
• April 18 – Beta Vukanović, Serbian painter and centenarian
• August 21 – Aubrey Beardsley, English painter and illustrator

Deaths

• April 2 – Samuel F. B. Morse, American inventor and painter of portraits and historic scenes
• April 10 – John Mix Stanley, American painter
• May 24 – Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, German painter
• August 8 – Eduard Magnus, German painter
• September 30 – Jakob Alt, German landscape painter
• October 29 – Thomas Combe, English printer and patron of the arts
• November 5 – Thomas Sully, English-born American portrait painter
• November 13 – Margaret Sarah Carpenter, English portrait painter
• November 25 – John Partridge, British artist and portrait painter
• December 23 – George Catlin, American painter who specialized in portraits of Native Americans in the Old West
• probable – Severin Roesen, American painter of still lives