1870 in art

Events from the year 1870 in art.

Events

 * June 28 – Claude Monet marries his mistress and model Camille Doncieux in Paris; Gustave Courbet is a witness.
 * July – Franco-Prussian War breaks out: Monet, Pissarro, Daubigny and the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel flee to London; Cézanne and his mistress, Marie-Hortense Fiquet, leave Paris for L'Estaque (on the French Riviera) where he predominantly paints landscapes. In August, Frédéric Bazille joins a Zouave regiment. In September the Dutch painter Lourens Alma Tadema moves permanently to London where he adopts the name Lawrence Alma-Tadema.
 * Édouard Manet and Louis Edmond Duranty fight a duel at Café Guerbois, Paris.
 * Russian industrialist and patron of the arts Savva Mamontov acquires the Abramtsevo Colony and hosts a group of traditionalist artists there.
 * Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Poems are published, exhumed from Elizabeth Siddal's grave.
 * Daoud Corm goes to Rome to study under Roberto Bompiani at the Accademia di San Luca.

Paintings

 * Wilhelm Amberg – Reading from Goethe's Werther (Vorlesung aus Goethes Werther)
 * Frédéric Bazille
 * Countryside near Lex
 * Studio in the rue Condamine
 * La Toilette
 * Cathy Madox Brown – Ford Madox Brown at his Easel
 * Ford Madox Brown – Romeo and Juliet
 * Edward Burne-Jones – Phyllis and Demophoon
 * Paul Cézanne – Paul Alexis reading a manuscript to Émile Zola (1869–70; São Paulo Museum of Art)
 * Edgar Degas
 * The Dancing Class (c.)
 * The Orchestra at the Opera (c.)
 * Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Nouÿ – Demosthenes Practicing Oratory (Démosthène s'exerçant à la parole)
 * Henri Fantin-Latour – A Studio in the Batignolles (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)
 * Anselm Feuerbach – The Judgement of Paris (c. 1869–70)
 * Mariano Fortuny – The Spanish Wedding (Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya)
 * Jean-Léon Gérôme – Moorish Bath
 * Arthur Hughes – You Cannot Barre Love Oute
 * Christian Inger - Smith Rescued by Pocahontas
 * Jean-Paul Laurens – Pope Formosus and Stephen VI (Le Pape Formose et Étienne VII)
 * Édouard Manet
 * La Brioche (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
 * Effect of Snow on Petit-Montrouge (National Museum Cardiff)
 * John Everett Millais – The Boyhood of Raleigh (Tate Britain, London)
 * Pierre-Auguste Renoir
 * Madame Clémentine Valensi Stora (L'Algérienne)
 * La Promenade
 * Dante Gabriel Rossetti
 * Beata Beatrix (approximate completion date)
 * Sibylla Palmifera
 * Dmitri Sinodi-Popov – An Old Greek
 * James Tissot
 * Captain Frederick Gustavus Burnaby
 * La Partie carrée
 * Raja Ravi Varma – Shakuntala

Sculpture

 * Statue of Abraham Lincoln (New York City)

Awards

 * Grand Prix de Rome, painting:
 * Grand Prix de Rome, sculpture:
 * Grand Prix de Rome, architecture: Albert-Félix-Théophile Thomas.
 * Grand Prix de Rome, music: Charles Edouard Lefebvre & Henri Maréchal

Births

 * January 1 – Louis Vauxcelles, French Jewish art critic (died 1943)
 * January 11 – Alexander Stirling Calder, American sculptor (died 1945)
 * February 5 – C. E. Brock, English painter and illustrator (died 1938)
 * March 13 – William Glackens, American painter (died 1938)
 * June 22 – Antonio Dattilo Rubbo, Italian-born painter and art teacher (died 1955)
 * July 21 – Emil Orlík, Czech-born painter and lithographer (died 1932)
 * July 25 – Maxfield Parrish, American painter and illustrator (died 1966)
 * November 18 – Franz Metzner, German sculptor (died 1919)
 * November 25 – Maurice Denis, French painter and decorative artist (died 1943)
 * December 23 – John Marin, American painter (died 1953)
 * date unknown – Arthur Diehl, English-born landscape painter (died 1929)

Deaths

 * January 17 – Alexander Anderson, American illustrator (born 1775)
 * January 27 – Johannes Flintoe, Danish-Norwegian painter of Norwegian landscapes (born 1787)
 * February 21 – Robert Jefferson Bingham, English-born photographer (born 1824 or 1825)
 * March 19 – William Egley, English miniature painter (born 1798)
 * April 25 – Daniel Maclise, Irish-born painter (born 1806)
 * May 17 – David Octavius Hill, Scottish painter and pioneer photographer (born 1802)
 * July 13 – Christian Albrecht Jensen, Danish painter (born 1792)
 * August 25 – Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford, English francophile art collector (born 1800)
 * November 7 – Cornelia Aletta van Hulst, Dutch painter (born 1797)
 * November 28 – Frédéric Bazille, French Impressionist painter (born 1841) (killed in action)
 * December 9
 * Max Emanuel Ainmiller, German glass painter (born 1807)
 * Patrick MacDowell, Irish sculptor from Belfast (born 1799)
 * December 12 – Martin Cregan, Irish portrait painter (born 1788)
 * Undated – Achille Leonardi, Italian genre painter (born 1800)