1876 in art

Events

• April – Impressionist exhibition at the house of Paul Durand-Ruel, 11 rue Peletier, in Paris, accompanied by Louis Edmond Duranty's essay The New Painting.
• May 16 – German American "Napoleon of crime" Adam Worth steals Gainsborough's Portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire from Agnew's gallery in Old Bond Street, London three weeks after its sale at Christie's for 10,000 guineas, the highest price ever paid for a painting at auction at this time. It is not recovered until 1901.
• Henrietta Montalba exhibits at the Royal Academy for the first time.
• Kathleen Newton moves into the London home of James Tissot, becoming his mistress and model.

Paintings

• Lawrence Alma-Tadema
• * '
• * '
• Thomas Armstrong – Woman with Lilies
• Edward Mitchell Bannister – Under the Oaks
• Albert Fitch Bellows – Sunday in Devonshire
• Gustave Caillebotte
• * Le déjeuner
• * Le Pont de l'Europe
• * Portraits in the country
• * Young Man at the Piano
• Paul Cézanne – Vase of Flowers
• Ernest Christophe – La Comédie humaine – Le Masque
• Georges Clairin – Portrait de Sarah Bernhardt
• Charles West Cope – The Council of the [Royal Academy Selecting Pictures for the Exhibition, 1875]
• Gustave Courbet – Entree d'un Gave
• Edgar Degas
• * L'Absinthe
• * Dichesa di Montejasi with her Daughters, Elena and Camilla
• Paul Dubois – My Children
• Thomas Eakins – The Chess Players
• Jean-Léon Gérôme – Pool in a Harem
• Winslow Homer – Breezing Up
• James Wilson Alexander MacDonald – Statue of Fitz-Greene Halleck
• John MacWhirter – '
• Édouard Manet – Before the Mirror
• Anton Mauve – Morning Ride on the Beach
• John Everett Millais
• * '
• * The Sound of Many Waters
• * The Twins
• * ,The [Yeoman of the Guard (painting)|The Yeoman of the Guard]
• Claude Monet
• * Coin du jardin à Montgeron
• * [La Japonaise (painting)|La Japonaise (Camille Monet in Japanese Costume)]
• Gustave Moreau – Salome Dancing before Herod
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• * A Girl with a Watering Can
• * Bal du moulin de la Galette
• * The Swing
• * In the Garden
• Ilya Repin – Sadko
• Emma Sandys – Fiammetta
• Henryk Siemiradzki – Nero's Torches
• William James Stillman – English Wild Flowers
• James Tissot
• * '
• * '
• Viktor Vasnetsov – ''Moving House''

Sculptures

• Thomas Ball
• * Emancipation Memorial
• * Statue of Daniel Webster
• Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi
• * Bartholdi Fountain
• * Statue of the [Marquis de Lafayette (New York City)|Statue of the Marquis de Lafayette]
• Charles E. Cassell – Confederate Monument
• Carl Conrads – The American Volunteer
• Andrew Currie – Statue of [Robert the Bruce, Stirling Castle]
• Moses Jacob Ezekiel – Religious Liberty
• Fratelli Gianfranchi – Statue of George Washington
• Richard Saltonstall Greenough – John Winthrop
• Herman Kirn – Catholic Total Abstinence Union Fountain
• James Wilson Alexander MacDonald – Statue of Fitz-Greene Halleck
• Matthew Noble – Statue of Robert Peel, Parliament Square
• Louis Rebisso – Equestrian statue of James B. McPherson
• Amelia Robertson Hill – Statue of David Livingstone, Edinburgh
• Randolph Rogers – Statue of William H. Seward
• Horatio Stone – Statue of [Edward Dickinson Baker]
• Anne Whitney – Statue of Samuel Adams
• Unknown – Confederate Monument of Bowling Green
• Unknown – Dauphin County Veteran's Memorial Obelisk

Births

• February 8 – Paula Modersohn-Becker, German painter
• Ásgrímur Jónsson - Ásgrímur Jónsson, Icelandic painter
• March 23 – Muirhead Bone, Scottish-born etcher
• April 1 – Jacoba van Heemskerck, Dutch painter and graphic artist
• April 11 – Paul Henry, Irish painter
• June 22 – Madeleine Vionnet, French fashion designer
• July 12 – Alphaeus Philemon Cole, American portrait artist
• July 17 – Melvin Ormond Hammond, Canadian photographer
• August 9 – Augustin Lesage, French outsider artist
• September 3 – Olive Edis, English photographer
• September 14 – César Klein, German painter and designer
• November 4 – James Earle Fraser, American sculptor
• November 17 – August Sander, German photographer
• December 23 – Stevan Aleksić, Serbian painter.date unknown – Hiroshi Yoshida, Japanese painter and woodblock print maker

Deaths

• January 22 – Sir George Harvey, Scottish painter
• February 29
• * Charles-Philippe Larivière, French academic painter and lithographer
• * Jozef Van Lerius, Belgian romantic-historical painter
• March 13 – Joseph von Führich, Austrian painter
• April 8 – John Graham Lough, English sculptor of funerary monuments
• June 11 – Giovanni Battista Cassevari, Italian miniature portrait painter
• August 15 – John Frederick Lewis, English painter
• August 27 – Eugène Fromentin, French painter
• September 17 – Franz Nadorp, German painter primarily working and living in Rome
• October 21 – Uroš Knežević, Serbian painter
• November 10 – Édouard Traviès, French painter
• November 18 – Narcisse Virgilio Diaz, French painter date unknown – Robert Richard Scanlan, Irish painter and portraitist