1874 in art

Events

• February–March – A memorial exhibition of drawings and watercolors by Viktor Hartmann is held at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg and inspires his friend Modest Mussorgsky to compose the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition.
• April 15 – May 15 – First exhibition by the Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs is held in a private studio outside the official Paris Salon; on April 25, Louis Leroy reviewing the exhibition in the French satirical newspaper Le Charivari under the heading "L'Exposition des impressionistes", coins the term "Impressionism" to describe the movement, with particular reference to Claude Monet's Impression, Sunrise, first exhibited here and in May sold to the businessman and collector Ernest Hoschedé. Renoir exhibits six works, including La Loge. The only female exhibitor is Berthe Morisot.
• Summer – Monet visits Amsterdam.
• August 22 – English illustrator Helen Paterson marries Irish poet and editor William Allingham and becomes a watercolourist under her married name.
• c. December 19 – Monet begins painting his Snow at Argenteuil series.
• December 22 – Berthe Morisot marries Eugène, brother of Édouard Manet, at Passy.
• Goya's Black Paintings are transferred to canvas.

Works

• April 26 – Confederate Obelisk
• Peter Nicolai Arbo
• * Dagr
• * Self-portrait
• Thomas Jones Barker – Balaklava – One of the Six Hundred
• Caroline Shawk Brooks – Dreaming Iolanthe
• Ford Madox Brown – Cromwell on his Farm
• Edward Burne-Jones – The Beguiling of Merlin
• Louis Buvelot – Macedon Ranges
• Edgar Degas – The Dance Class
• Giuseppe De Nittis – How Cold It Is!
• Pere Borrell del Caso – Escaping Criticism
• Thomas Eakins – Portrait of Professor Benjamin H. Rand
• Henri Fantin-Latour – Still Life with Pansies
• Luke Fildes – Applicants for Admission to a Casual Ward
• Emmanuel Frémiet – Joan of Arc
• Walter Greaves – Old Battersea Bridge
• Armand Guillaumin – La Seine
• Winslow Homer – Farmer with a Pitch Fork
• Vilhelm Kyhn – Sildig Sommeraften ved Himmelbjærget
• Alphonse Legros – The Tinker
• Édouard Manet
• * Boating
• * Argenteuil
• * Claude Monet Painting in his Studio
• Antonin Mercié – Gloria Victis
• Claude Monet – The Railway Bridge at Argenteuil
• Albert Joseph Moore – Shells
• Thomas Moran – Chasm of the Colorado
• Berthe Morisot – The Butterfly Hunt
• John Pettie – Jacobites
• Camille Pissarro – Portrait of Cézanne
• Illarion Pryanishnikov – Episode in the War of 1812
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• * Danseuse
• * La Loge
• * La Parisienne
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti
• * The Damsel of the Sanct Grael or Holy Grail
• * Proserpine
• Alfred Sisley – Misty Morning
• James Tissot
• *Frederick Burnaby
• *London Visitors
• *''On the Thames''

Births

• February 23 – Arnold Friedman, American modernist painter
• March 9 – John Duncan Fergusson, Scottish Colourist painter
• March 23 – Henri Manguin, French Fauvist painter
• April 7 – Frederick Carl Frieseke, American-born painter
• May 11 – Einar Jónsson, Icelandic sculptor
• July 24 – Félix Pissarro, French-born painter
• July 28 – Joaquín Torres García, Uruguayan painter
• October 16 – Otto Mueller, Silesian painter
• October 21 – Charles R. Knight, American animal painter
• November 9 – Julio Romero de Torres, Andalusian painter of female nudes
• December 18 – Frank O. Salisbury, English portrait and official painter date unknown
• * Mabel Esplin, English stained-glass artist
• * Dorothea Sharp, English painter

Deaths

• January 29 – John Christian Schetky, Scottish-born marine painter
• April 19 – Owen Jones, British architect, interior designer and pioneer of chromolithography
• April 20 – Alexander Hunter Murray, fur trader in Canada and artist
• May 5 – Marc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre, Swiss painter in France
• June 14 – Julien-Léopold Boilly, French draughtsman and watercolorist
• July 25 – Edward Troye, Swiss-born American equine painter
• August 27 – John Henry Foley, Irish sculptor
• October 28 – William Henry Rinehart, American sculptor in Italy
• November 21 – Marià Fortuny, Catalan-Spanish painter in Italy
• December 6 – Gustaf Wappers, Flemish painter in France date unknown – Henry Bryan Ziegler, British landscape and portrait painter