1891 in art

Events

• May 10 – Danish sculptor Anne Marie Brodersen marries her compatriot, the classical composer Carl Nielsen, in St Mark's English Church, Florence, the couple having first met on March 2 in Paris.
• June – Sidney Paget produces his first illustrations for Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories in The Strand Magazine.
• Henri Matisse begins his studies at the Académie Julian.
• Correspondence of Marie Bashkirtseff and Gustave Flaubert is published.
• Paul Gauguin sails to French Polynesia.
• Impressionist Armand Guillaumin wins 100,000 francs in the French state lottery and is able to devote himself to painting full-time.
• Félix Vallotton makes his first woodcuts.

Works

• William-Adolphe Bouguereau
• * The Goose Girl
• * Work Interrupted
• Frank Bramley – For Of Such Is The Kingdom Of Heaven
• Edward Burne-Jones – Sponsa de Libano
• Philip Hermogenes Calderon – Saint Elizabeth of Hungary's Great Act of Renunciation
• Milly Childers – Hugh Culling Eardley Childers
• Pierre Puvis de Chavannes – The Shepherd's Song
• Édouard Detaille – Vive L'Empereur: charge du quatrième hussards à la bataille de Friedland, 14 juin 1807
• Alexander Doyle – Statue of Henry W. Grady
• Thomas Eakins – Miss Amelia Van Buren
• James Ensor – Skeletons Fighting Over a Pickled Herring
• Luke Fildes – The Doctor
• Akseli Gallen-Kallela – Aino Triptych
• Paul Gauguin – Tahitian Women on the Beach
• J. W. Godward
• * Innocent Amusement
• * A Pompeian Lady
• * The Sweet Siesta of a Summer Day
• Hubert von Herkomer
• *
• * On Strike
• Carl Kahler – My Wife's Lovers
• Benjamin Williams Leader – The Excavation of the Manchester Ship Canal: Eastham Cutting with Mount Manisty in the Distance
• Sir Frederic Leighton – Perseus and Andromeda
• John Henry Lorimer – The Ordination of Elders in a Scottish Kirk
• Frederick William MacMonnies – Statue of James S. T. Stranahan
• Jan Matejko – Constitution of May 3, 1791
• John Everett Millais – Glen Birnam
• Claude Monet
• * The Haystack Series
• * The Poplar Series
• Edvard Munch – Melancholy
• Mikhail Nesterov – The Vision of the Youth Bartholomew
• Edward Poynter – When the World was Young
• Henrietta Rae – Miss Nightingale at Scutari
• Paul Ranson – Witches Around the Fire
• Ilya Repin – Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks
• Tom Roberts – A break away!
• Henri Rousseau – Tiger in a Tropical Storm
• Augustus Saint-Gaudens – Adams Memorial
• John Singer Sargent – Egyptians Raising Water from the Nile
• Giovanni Segantini
• * Midday in the Alps
• * The Punishment of Lust
• Georges Seurat – completion of The Circus
• John "Hans" Staehli – Chiming Fountain, Portland, Oregon
• Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Moulin Rouge: La Goulue
• Edward Arthur Walton – Bluette
• J. W. Waterhouse – Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses
• George Frederic Watts – ''After the Deluge''

Births

• January 21 – Franz Sedlacek, Austrian painter
• February 13 – Grant Wood, American painter
• April 2 – Max Ernst, German painter, sculptor, graphic artist and poet
• April 4 – Virgilio Guidi, Italian painter
• April 7 – David Low, New Zealand-born editorial cartoonist
• May 10 – Mahmoud Mokhtar, Egyptian sculptor
• June 8 – Audrey Munson, American actress and artist's model
• June 19 – John Heartfield, born Helmut Herzfeld, German graphic designer
• June 30 - Stanley Spencer, English painter
• August 15 – Iva Despić-Simonović, Croatian sculptor
• August 25 – Alberto Savinio, Italian writer, painter and composer
• September 22 – Alma Thomas, African American abstract expressionist painter
• October 7 – Charles R. Chickering, American illustrator
• October 11 – George Ault, American painter
• December 2 – Otto Dix, German painter and graphic artist
• December 9 – Mark Gertler, British painter

Deaths

• January 27 – Jervis McEntee, American painter of the Hudson River School
• January 30 – Charles Joshua Chaplin, French painter and engraver
• January 31 – Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, French classicist painter
• February 9 – Johan Jongkind, Dutch painter
• March 19 – Ernest Hoschedé, French businessman and collector of Impressionist paintings
• March 26 – Herman Frederik Carel ten Kate, Dutch watercolorist
• March 29 – Georges Seurat, French Post-Impressionist painter
• April 5 – Daniel Cottier, Scottish-born artist and designer
• April 14 – Carlos Luis de Ribera y Fieve, Spanish painter, son of Juan Antonio Ribera
• May 12 – Louisa Beresford, Marchioness of Waterford, British Pre-Raphaelite watercolourist
• May 16 – John Banvard, American panorama painter
• September 5 – Jules-Élie Delaunay, French academic painter
• September 6 – Elise Arnberg, Swedish miniaturist and photographer
• September 9 – William Theed, English sculptor
• September 11 – Théodule Ribot, French realist painter
• September 15 – John Steell, Scottish portrait sculptor
• October 30 – Truman Seymour, American soldier and painter