1886 in art

Events

• March – Vincent van Gogh moves to Paris.
• April – New English Art Club mounts its first exhibition, at the Egyptian Hall, London, providing an alternative to the Royal Academy for younger artists, such as Philip Wilson Steer, under the influence of Paris.
• April 28 – Paul Cézanne marries his model and former lover Marie-Hortense Fiquet, despite having publicly stated that he has no feelings for her.
• May 15-June 15 – Eighth and last collective Impressionist exhibition in Paris at 1 rue Laffitte introduces Georges Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte among other early examples of pontillism exhibited separately and includes a group of Degas nudes.
• June 30 – Royal Holloway College for women, established by patent medicine manufacturer Thomas Holloway, opened by Queen Victoria at Egham in Surrey, England, incorporating a picture gallery for which the founder has acquired a collection of predominantly modern British works; this is the first art gallery in Britain intended primarily for viewing by women.
• July – Paul Gauguin joins the Pont-Aven School of artists for the summer.
• August 21–September 21 – Second exhibition by the Société des Artistes Indépendants in Paris. Henri Rousseau exhibits for the first time and Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte causes the critic Félix Fénéon to describe the technique of pointillism and chromoluminarist style being developed by Seurat and Paul Signac as neo-impressionism.
• October 28 – Dedication of Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.
• P. H. Emerson publishes his first photographic book, Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads.
• Publication in French of Irish-born writer George Moore's autobiographical novel Confessions of a Young Man describing bohemian life in 1870s Paris among the Impressionists.
• Publication of Émile Zola's novel L'Œuvre based on his friendship with Paul Cézanne.

Awards

• Prix de Rome – Charles Lebayle, ''Claudius Proclaimed Emperor''

Works

• Ivan Aivazovsky – Storm
• Lawrence Alma-Tadema – '
• William Bliss Baker
• * Fallen Monarchs
• * Under the Apple-Trees
• Emmanuel Benner – Mary Magdalene in the Desert
• Anna Bilińska – At the Seashore
• Frederick Brown – '
• Alexander Calandrelli – Equestrian statue of Frederick William IV
• Gustaf Cederström
• * The Baptists
• * The Salvation Army
• William Merritt Chase – Hattie
• Emmeline Deane – Anna Bilińska
• Edgar Degas
• * The Tub
• * Woman in the Bath
• Lowes Cato Dickinson – The Lawn at Goodwood
• Alexander Doyle – Statue of Benjamin Harvey Hill
• Albert Dubois-Pillet
• * The Banks of the Seine at Neuilly
• * Three barges moored alongside an industrial town
• Paul Gauguin – Still Life with Profile of Laval
• Nikolai Ge – Sophia and Alexandra Tolstoya
• Jean-Léon Gérôme
• * Bonaparte Before the Sphinx
• * The End of the Session
• James Gowans and John Stevenson Rhind – Brass Founders' Pillar
• James Guthrie –
• Margaret Bernadine Hall – Fantine
• Vilhelm Hammershøi – Frederikke Hammershøi, the artist's mother
• Winslow Homer – Eight Bells
• Pierre-Georges Jeanniot – La ligne de feu, 16 août 1870
• Fernand Khnopff – The Garden
• Benjamin Williams Leader – Evening After Rain, Worcestershire
• Alexander Litovchenko – Tsar Alexis and Archbishop Nikon Venerating the Relics of Patriarch Philip
• Edwin Long – The Discovery of Moses
• John Everett Millais – Portia
• Claude Monet
• * The Manneporte at Étretat
• * The Port Coton Pyramids
• * Study of a Figure Outdoors: Woman with a Parasol, facing left
• Albert Joseph Moore – Silver
• Henry Moore – Mount's Bay
• Edvard Munch – The Sick Child
• Edward Poynter – Mary, Countess of Wemyss
• Jean-François Raffaëlli – At the Caster's
• Cristóbal Rojas – La miseria
• John Singer Sargent
• * Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose
• * Millet's Garden
• Georges Seurat – A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte – 1884
• Henryk Siemiradzki – Christ with Martha and Mary
• Solomon Joseph Solomon – Ajax and Cassandra
• Vincent van Gogh
• * Le Moulin de la Galette
• * Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette
• * Vase with Poppies
• Georg von Rosen – Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld with the Vega
• George Frederick Watts – Hope
• Anders Zorn – ''Sommarnöje''

Births

• January – René Beeh, German painter and draughtsman from Alsace
• March 1 – Oskar Kokoschka, Austrian artist, poet and playwright
• March 15 – Gerda Wegener, Danish artist
• April 19 – Hermine David, French painter
• June 14 – Archibald Nicoll, New Zealand painter
• September 1 – Tarsila do Amaral, Brazilian modernist artist
• September 16 – Jean Arp, Alsatian artist and writer
• October 17 – Andrej Bicenko, Russian fresco painter and muralist
• December 8 – Diego Rivera, Mexican painter and muralist
• December 15 – Jean Paul Slusser, painter, designer, art critic, professor, and director of the University of Michigan Museum of Art
• Viktor Jansson, Finnish sculptor
• Duncan Phillips, American art collector and critic

Deaths

• January 7 – Richard Dadd, painter
• April 16 – Andrew Nicholl, Irish painter
• May 19 – Arthur Quartley – American painter
• June 29 – Adolphe Joseph Thomas Monticelli, French painter
• July 21 – Karl von Piloty, painter
• August 25 – Charles Callahan Perkins, art critic and author
• September 17 – Asher Brown Durand, painter of the Hudson River School
• September 23 – Thomas Webster, painter
• November 20 – William Bliss Baker, American painter