1881 in art

Events from the year 1881 in art.

Events

 * April – Sixth Impressionist exhibition in Paris, at Nadar's studio.
 * August 31 – English painters Thomas Cooper Gotch and Caroline Burland Yates marry at Newlyn.
 * The Société des Artistes Français is established, with William-Adolphe Bouguereau as its first president.
 * Vincent van Gogh returns from study in Brussels to his parents' home in Etten (Netherlands) where he produces a number of early works, including the start of his series of peasant character studies and still lifes (including Still Life with Straw Hat).
 * Art Gallery of South Australia established in Adelaide.
 * St. Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts established at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, under the direction of Halsey Ives.
 * Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Ballads and Sonnets published.

Works

 * Lawrence Alma-Tadema
 * In the Tepidarium
 * Sappho and Alcaeus
 * Marie Bashkirtseff – The Studio
 * Jules Bastien-Lepage – Pauvre Fauvette
 * Alfred Boucher – La Piété Filiale (sculpture)
 * Frank Bramley – A Hopeless Dawn
 * Lady Butler – Scotland Forever!
 * Gustave Caillebotte - 'The Bezique Game (La partie de Bésigue)'
 * Paul Cézanne – Self-portrait with olive wallpaper
 * Pierre Puvis de Chavannes – The Poor Fisherman (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)
 * John Collier
 * Charles Darwin
 * Sir George Jessel
 * Edgar Degas
 * Little Dancer of Fourteen Years (sculpture)
 * Trotting Horse (California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco)
 * Stanhope Forbes – A Street in Brittany
 * Aleksander Gierymski – Jewess with Oranges
 * Atkinson Grimshaw – Shipping on the Clyde
 * Ralph Hedley – John Graham Lough in His Studio
 * Jean-Jacques Henner – Saint Jerome
 * Max Klinger – Paraphrases about the Finding of a Glove (etchings, printed)
 * Benjamin Williams Leader – February Fill Dyke
 * Frederic Leighton
 * Bianca
 * Whispers
 * Juan Luna – The Death of Cleopatra
 * Édouard Manet
 * Dead Eagle Owl
 * Le Suicidé
 * Luc-Olivier Merson – Nôtre-Dame de Paris
 * Hendrik Willem Mesdag – Panorama Mesdag
 * Claude Monet Waves Breaking
 * Albert Joseph Moore
 * Blossoms
 * Yellow Marguerites
 * Hjalmar Munsterhjelm – Woodland Pool by Moonlight
 * Giovanni Muzzioli – In the Temple of Bacchus
 * Jean-François Raffaëlli – Les déclassés (The Absinthe Drinkers)
 * Vinnie Ream – Admiral David G. Farragut (bronze, Washington, D.C.)
 * Pierre-Auguste Renoir
 * Bay of Naples, Evening
 * Blonde Bather (first version)
 * Luncheon of the Boating Party
 * Pink and Blue
 * Ilya Repin
 * Polina Strepetova as Lizaveta
 * Portrait of Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky
 * Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Found (work finished but never completed)
 * Augustus Saint-Gaudens – Admiral David Glasgow Farragut (bronze, Manhattan)
 * John Singer Sargent – Dr. Samuel Jean Pozzi at Home
 * Henryk Siemiradzki – The Sword Dance
 * William Stott of Oldham – Le Passeur ("The Ferry", Tate Britain)
 * Henry Jones Thaddeus – La retour du bracconier (The Wounded Poacher)
 * James Tissot – Goodbye, on the Mersey
 * Viktor Vasnetsov
 * Alenushka
 * Three Tsarevnas of the Underground Kingdom
 * James McNeill Whistler – Portrait of Lady Meux in two completed versions:
 * Arrangement in Black, No. 5
 * Harmony in Pink and Grey

Births

 * January 4 – Wilhelm Lehmbruck, German sculptor (suicide 1919)
 * January 5 – Pablo Gargallo, Aragonese painter and sculptor (died 1934)
 * February 4 – Fernand Léger, French painter (died 1955)
 * February 11
 * Carlo Carrà, Italian painter (died 1966)
 * Robert Borlase Smart, English painter and critic (died 1947)
 * April 10 – William John Leech, Irish painter (died 1968)
 * April 16 – Fortunino Matania, Italian-born illustrator and war artist (died 1963)
 * July 12 – Natalia Goncharova, Russian theatrical costume and set designer, painter and illustrator (died 1962)
 * July 28 – Léon Spilliaert, Belgian symbolist painter and graphic artist (died 1946)
 * July 29 – Jessie Traill, Australian printmaker (died 1967)
 * August 4 – Wenzel Hablik, Bohemian painter, graphic artist, designer (died 1934)
 * October 4 - René Gimpel, French artbdealer (died 1945)
 * October 25 – Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter, draughtsman and sculptor (died 1973)
 * December 8 – Albert Gleizes, French painter (died 1953)
 * December 31 – Max Pechstein, German painter (died 1955)
 * uncertain
 * William Conor, Irish painter (died 1968)
 * Nazmi Ziya Güran, Turkish painter (died 1937)

Deaths

 * January 3 – Anna McNeill Whistler, "Whistler's Mother" (born 1804)
 * January 24 – James Collinson, English Pre-Raphaelite painter (born 1825)
 * February 9 – Jacques-Édouard Gatteaux, French sculptor and medal engraver (born 1788)
 * March 11 – Thomas Brigstocke, Welsh portrait painter (born 1809)
 * May 24 – Samuel Palmer, English painter, etcher and lithographer (born 1805)
 * July 25 – Edward Charles Williams, English landscape painter (born 1807)
 * December 6 – Thomas Skinner, English etcher (poisoned; born 1819)
 * December 13 – John Quidor, American painter (born 1801)
 * December 14 – Berndt Godenhjelm, Finnish painter (born 1799)
 * December 21 - Francesco Hayez, Italian historical, portrait and political painter (born 1791)