1887 in art

Events

• February ' – Fourth annual exhibition of Les XX, at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels. Artists invited to show in addition to members of the group include Walter Sickert, Camille Pissarro, Berthe Morisot and Georges-Pierre Seurat. The major work shown is Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.
• March 26 – June 8 – Third exhibition by the Société des Artistes Indépendants in Paris.
• November 14 – Paul Gauguin and Charles Laval return to Paris from Martinique where they have been living since leaving Panama in June.
• December ' – Vincent van Gogh arranges an exhibition of paintings by himself, Émile Bernard, Louis Anquetin, and Toulouse-Lautrec in the Restaurant du Chalet, 43 Avenue de Clichy, Montmartre, Paris. Bernard and Anquetin sell their first paintings; van Gogh exchanges work with Gauguin.
• Vincent van Gogh begins his first Sunflowers series of paintings in Paris.
• Walter Crane illustrates "The Architecture of Art".
• Charles Lang Freer's first Asian art purchase is a painted Japanese fan.
• Sir John Everett Millais' painting Bubbles is acquired for advertising purposes by Pears soap.

Works

• Atlanta Cyclorama
• Lawrence Alma-Tadema – The Women of Amphissa
• Otto Bache – Christian IV's Coronation, 1596
• William Gerard Barry – Time Flies
• Albert Bettannier – The Black Spot
• Anna Bilińska – Self-Portrait with Apron and Brushes
• Joseph Boehm – Jubilee Head of Queen Victoria on British coinage
• Alexander Milne Calder – Major General George Gordon Meade
• Thomas Shields Clarke – A Fool's Fool
• Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret – Breton Women at a Pardon
• Pierre Puvis de Chavannes – Young Girls at the Seaside
• Frank Duveneck – Elizabeth Boott Duveneck
• Jean-Léon Gérôme – Omphale
• Edward John Gregory – Marooned and Marooning
• Atkinson Grimshaw
• * Canny Glasgow
• * Liverpool Quay by Moonlight
• * Prince's Dock, Hull
• Max Klinger – The Judgement of Paris
• Léon Augustin Lhermitte – The Gleaners
• John Longstaff – Breaking the News
• Matthijs Maris – The Dreamer
• Albert Joseph Moore – Midsummer
• Walter Osborne – On Suffolk Sands
• Hanna Hirsch-Pauli – Breakfast Time
• Eilif Peterssen – Summer Evening and Nocturne
• Camille Pissarro –
• Edward Poynter – Corner of the Marketplace
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir – Les Grandes Baigneuses
• Ilya Repin – Portrait of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy
• Theodore Roussel – The Reading Girl
• Valentin Serov
• * Girl with Peaches
• * Self-portrait
• Paul Signac – The Town Beach, Collioure
• Solomon Joseph Solomon – Samson and Delilah
• Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – A Montrouge–Rosa La Rouge
• Vincent van Gogh
• *Coin de Jardin avec Papillions
• *Crab on its Back
• *Portrait of Alexander Reid
• George Frederic Watts – Mrs. G. F. Watts
• Henry Tanworth Wells – ''Victoria Regina''

Births

January to June

• January 3 – August Macke, German Expressionist painter.
• February 5 – Albert Paris Gütersloh, Austrian painter and writer.
• March 23 – Juan Gris, Spanish painter and sculptor.
• March 25 – Josef Čapek, Czech painter.
• April 29 – Stanley Cursiter, Scottish painter and curator.
• May – Jacob Steinhardt, German-born Israeli painter and woodcut artist.
• May 12 – Leo Michelson, Latvian-American painter and sculptor.
• May 16 - Laura Wheeler Waring, African-America painter
• May 21
• * Barker Fairley, English-born Canadian painter, writer, and educator.
• * Paul Maze, French-born Post-Impressionist painter.
• May 22 – Arthur Cravan, born Fabian Avenarius Lloyd, Swiss-born Dadaist writer, poet, artist and boxer
• May 30 – Alexander Archipenko, Ukrainian sculptor.
• June 20 – Kurt Schwitters, German Dadaist painter and writer.

July to December

• July 7 – Marc Chagall, Russian-Belarusian-French painter.
• July 28 – Marcel Duchamp, influential French artist.
• August 31 – William McMillan, Scottish sculptor.
• September 24 – Frank Newbould, English poster artist.
• October 6 – Le Corbusier, French architect and painter.
• October 9 – Manuel Ortiz de Zárate, Chilean painter.
• October 13 – Kate Lechmere, English painter associated with the Vorticists and milliner.
• November 1 – L. S. Lowry, English painter.
• November 14 – Amadeo de Souza Cardoso, Portuguese painter.
• November 15 – Georgia O'Keeffe, American painter.
• December 14 – Xul Solar, Argentine painter, sculptor and writer.
• December 29 – Nell Walden, Swedish-born abstract artist and collector

Deaths

• March 24 – Ivan Kramskoi, painter and art critic
• May 20 – Paul Emile Chappuis, photographer
• June 4 – Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, French sculptor and painter
• June 5 – Hans von Marées, painter
• July 8 – John Wright Oakes, landscape painter
• July 17 – Nicaise de Keyser, painter
• August 19 – Alvan Clark, American astronomer, telescope maker, portrait painter and engraver
• December 19
• * August Becker, painter
• * François Bonvin, realist painter date unknown – Giovanni Battista Amendola, sculptor