# 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
** Boar Lane, Leeds
** 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
* John Everett Millais – Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli
* 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)