1890 in art

Events

• January 18 – February 23 – Seventh annual exhibition of Les XX in Brussels includes a display of work by Vincent van Gogh. Henry de Groux criticises his paintings but Albert Aurier praises them. From the exhibition, van Gogh sells The Red Vineyard to Anna Boch, said to be the only sale of his work during his lifetime.
• March 20 – April 27 – The Société des Artistes Indépendants show in Paris includes a major display of van Gogh paintings.
• May 20 – Van Gogh moves to Auvers-sur-Oise on the edge of Paris in the care of Dr Paul Gachet where he will produce around seventy paintings in as many days. More than a dozen are size 30 canvases.
• June–July – Van Gogh develops his double-square painting technique, e.g. in the July paintings Wheatfield with Crows and Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds.
• July 27 – Death of Vincent van Gogh: van Gogh perhaps paints Tree Roots, then apparently shoots himself, dying two days later.
• September 20 – Theo van Gogh, assisted by Émile Bernard, mounts an improvised retrospective exhibition of his brother Vincent's works in Theo's former Paris apartment.
• November – Lucien Pissarro settles permanently in London.
• Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts revived in Paris under the leadership of Ernest Meissonier, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Jules Dalou, Auguste Rodin, Carolus-Duran, Bracquemond and Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, with an annual exhibition reviewed as the Salon de Champ-de-Mars, opening a fortnight later than the official Paris Salon.
• Claude Monet begins painting his Haystacks series.
• Newlyn Industrial Class set up at the fishing port in Cornwall and begins production of Newlyn Copper repoussé work.

Works

• Anna Ancher – Syende fiskerpige
• William-Adolphe Bouguereau
• * L'Amour et Psyché, enfants
• * The Bohemian
• * Gabrielle Cot
• * A Little Coaxing
• Frank Brangwyn – Funeral at Sea
• Dennis Miller Bunker – Jessica
• Edward Burne-Jones
• * The Legend of Briar Rose
• * with William Morris and John Henry Dearle – The Adoration of the Magi
• Cyrus Edwin Dallin – Signal of Peace
• Thomas Dewing – Summer
• Francis Edwin Elwell – Dickens and Little Nell
• Henri Fantin-Latour – Portrait of Sonia
• Fidus – Light Prayer
• Jean-Léon Gérôme – Working in Marble
• J. W. Godward
• * Athenais
• * Flowers Of Venus
• * A Pompeian Bath
• James Guthrie – '
• John Haberle – The Palette
• William Harnett – The Faithful Colt
• Jonathan Scott Hartley – Daguerre Memorial
• Martin Johnson Heade – Giant Magnolias on a Blue Velvet Cloth
• Ferdinand Hodler – Night
• Winslow Homer
• * Cloud Shadows
• * Summer Night
• Fernand Khnopff – Silence
• P. S. and Marie Krøyer – Double portrait
• Henry Herbert La Thangue – Leaving Home
• Jules Joseph Lefebvre – Lady Godiva
• George Dunlop Leslie – Sun and Moon Flowers
• William Logsdail – The Ninth of November, 1888
• Princess Louise, Marchioness of Lorne – Statue of her mother Queen Victoria, at McGill University, Montreal
• Anna Lea Merritt – Love Locked Out
• Arturo Michelena – Lastenia Tello de Michelena
• John Everett Millais
• * '
• * '
• Claude Monet – Boating on the River Epte
• Albert Joseph Moore – A Summer Night
• Edvard Munch – Night in Saint-Cloud
• Roderic O'Conor – La Lisiere du Bois
• Paul Peel – The Young Botanist
• Edward Poynter – The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon
• Henrietta Rae – Ophelia
• Paul Ranson – Nabis Landscape
• Odilon Redon – With Closed Eyes
• Frederic Remington – Aiding a Comrade
• William Blake Richmond – Venus and Anchises
• Tom Roberts – Shearing the Rams
• Auguste Rodin – Brother and Sister
• Henri Rousseau – Myself, Portrait-Landscape
• Adalbert Seligmann – Theodor Billroth Operating '
• Georges Seurat – Woman Powdering Herself
• Paul Signac – Opus 217: Against the Enamel of a Background Rhythmic with Beats and Angles, Tones, and Tints, Portrait of M. Félix Fénéon in 1890
• Charles Alexander Smith – L'Assemblée des six-comtés
• Joseph-Noël Sylvestre – The Sack of Rome by the Barbarians in 410
• John Tenniel – Dropping the Pilot
• James Tissot – Le rendez vous secret
• Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Dance at the Moulin Rouge
• Vincent van Gogh
• *
• * At Eternity's Gate
• * Road with Cypress and Star
• * Still Life: Vase with Pink Roses
• * The Wheat Field, Sunrise
• * Portrait of Dr. Gachet
• * Doctor Gachet's Garden in Auvers
• * Marguerite Gachet in the Garden
• * Marguerite Gachet at the Piano
• * Daubigny's Garden
• * Almond Blossoms
• * L'Arlésienne
• * The Church at Auvers
• * Houses at Auvers
• * Houses in Auvers
• * Street in Auvers
• * Thatched Cottages and Houses
• * White House at Night
• * Thatched Cottages by a Hill
• * Farms near Auvers
• * The Town Hall at Auvers
• * Landscape with Castle Auvers at Sunset
• * Old Vineyard with Peasant Woman
• * Girl in White
• * Peasant Woman Against a Background of Wheat
• * Landscape with a Carriage and a Train
• * Landscape at Auvers in the Rain
• * Poppies and Butterflies and Long Grass with Butterflies from his Butterflies series
• * Tree Roots
• * Tree Trunks in the Grass
• * Undergrowth with Two Figures
• * Wheat Fields series
• ** Field with Green Wheat
• ** Wheat Field at Auvers with white house
• ** Ears of Wheat
• ** Wheat Fields near Auvers
• ** Wheat Fields with Auvers in the Background
• ** The Fields
• ** Wheat Field with Cornflowers
• ** Wheat Fields after the Rain
• ** Wheat Stack Under Clouded Sky
• ** Field with Stacks of Grain
• ** Sheaves of Wheat
• ** Harvest near Auvers
• ** Wheatfield with Crows
• ** Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds
• ** Sheaves of Wheat
• ** Field with Stacks of Grain
• * Copies
• ** Cows
• ** First Steps
• ** The Good Samaritan
• ** Men Drinking
• ** Morning: Peasant Couple Going to Work
• ** Noon – Rest from Work
• ** Snow covered Field with a Harrow
• ** Two Peasant Women Digging in the Snow
• ** The Woodcutter
• ** The Raising of Lazarus
• George Frederic Watts
• * The All-Pervading
• * Little Red Riding Hood
• J. B. B. Wellington – Eventide
• William R. Coats – Ypsilanti Water Tower, winner of Most Phallic Building contest

Awards

• Grand Prix de Rome, painting:.
• Grand Prix de Rome, sculpture: Paul-Jean-Baptiste Gasq.
• Grand Prix de Rome, architecture: Emmanuel Pontremoli.
• Grand Prix de Rome, music:.

Births

January to June

• January 7 – Milton Menasco, American painter and art director
• February 14 – Nina Hamnett, Welsh-born painter, model and designer
• March 17 – LeMoine Fitzgerald, painter
• April 14 – Gerald Curtis Delano, American painter
• April 21 – Dod Procter, English painter
• May 4 – Franklin Carmichael, painter
• June 12 – Egon Schiele, painter
• June 20 – Giorgio Morandi, painter and printmaker
• June 29 – Robert Laurent, American sculptor

July to December

• July 4 – Jacques Carlu, French architect and designer
• July 28
• * Grace Albee, American printmaker
• * Pinchus Kremegne, Belarusian sculptor, painter and lithographer
• August 5 – Naum Gabo, Russian sculptor
• September 10 – Elsa Schiaparelli, Italian fashion designer
• September 19 – Montague Dawson, English maritime painter
• October 6 – Phyllis Gardner, British graphic artist and dog breeder, beloved of Rupert Brooke
• October 16 – Paul Strand, American photographer and filmmaker
• November 21 – Jeanne Mammen, German painter
• November 23 – El Lissitzky, Russian designer, architect and photographer
• November 25 – Isaac Rosenberg, British poet and painter
• December 5 - David Bomberg, British painter
• December 6 – Rudolf Schlichter, German painter
• December 11 – Mark Tobey, American abstract expressionist painter
• December 25 - Leon Underwood, English sculptor.

Full date unknown

• Petar Dobrović, Serbian Expressionist painter
• Doris Brabham Hatt, English modernist painter
• Ze'ev Raban, Polish Jewish painter
• Jean Xceron, Greek-American painter

Deaths

• January 25 – Antonio Salviati, Italian glassmaker
• March 17 – John Rogers Herbert, English religious painter
• May 5 – Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury, French painter
• May 9 – Friedrich Loos, Austrian Biedermeier style painter, etcher and lithographer
• May 24 – Georgiana McCrae, Australian painter
• July 20 – Sir Richard Wallace, 1st Baronet, English francophile art collector and philanthropist
• July 29 – Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter
• August 18 – Albert Dubois-Pillet, French Neo-impressionist painter
• August 21 – Charles West Cope, English painter
• August 30 – Marianne North, English botanical artist
• December 12 – Sir Joseph Boehm, sculptor
• December 13 – François Bocion, Swiss painter
• December 18 – Gerolamo Induno, Italian painter
• December 19 – Eugène Lami, French painter and lithographer date unknown
• * John Lewis Brown, French painter
• * Auguste Ottin, French sculptor
• * Pietro Pezzati, Italian mural painter
• * Novak Radonić, Serbian painter