# 1839 in art

Events from the year 1839 in art.

## Events

* January 9 – The French Academy of Sciences announces the Daguerreotype photography process.
* January 25 – H. Fox Talbot shows his "photogenic drawings" at the Royal Institution in London.
* c. October – Robert Cornelius takes a daguerreotype self-portrait, the earliest known existing photographic portrait of a human in America.
* Honoré de Balzac's novel Pierre Grassou concerns an artist who lives off forgeries.

## Works

* Jean Alaux – The Battle of Denain
* John Bell – Babes in the Wood (sculpture)
* Sara Anne Bright – The Leaf (photogenic drawing)
* Johan Christian Dahl – View of Dresden by Moonlight
* Francesco Hayez – Reclining Odalisque
* George Hayter – The Coronation of Queen Victoria
* Johann Peter Krafft – The Declaration of Victory After the Battle of Leipzig
* Jean-Charles Langlois – The Battle of Smolensk
* Edwin Landseer – Dignity and Impudence
* Daniel Maclise – Portrait of Charles Dickens
* Carl Spitzweg – The Poor Poet
* J. M. W. Turner
** Ancient Rome – Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus
** Modern Rome – Campo Vaccino
** Cicero at his Villa
** The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up, 1838
* Peter von Hess – The Entry of King Otto of Greece into Athens
* David Wilkie – Sir David Baird Discovering the Body of Sultan Tipoo Sahib
* William Wyon – Una and the Lion (design for five pounds British gold coin)

## Births

* January 19 – Paul Cézanne, French painter (died 1906)
* March 16 – John Butler Yeats, Irish painter (died 1922)
* May 24 – Arthur Quartley, painter (died 1886)
* June 9 – Joseph Paelinck, Belgian painter (born 1781)
* September 1 – Charles Edward Perugini, English painter (died 1918)
* October 2 – Hans Thoma, German painter (died 1924)
* October 29 – Kate Dickens Perugini, English painter (died 1929)
* October 30 – Alfred Sisley, French impressionist painter (died 1899)
* November 16 – William De Morgan, English ceramic artist (died 1917)
* November 20 – Christian Wilberg, painter (died 1882)
* date unknown – François Sallé, French realist painter (died 1899)

## Deaths

* January 12 – Joseph Anton Koch, Austrian painter of the German Romantic movement (born 1768)
* January 14 – John Wesley Jarvis, American painter (born 1781)
* January 28 – Sir William Beechey, English portrait painter (born 1753)
* February 6 – François Louis Thomas Francia, French shorescape watercolorist (born 1772)
* February 8 – Giovanni Cendramini, Italian painter and engraver (born 1760)
* February 21 – John Charles Felix Rossi, English sculptor (born 1769)
* June 2 – Wijnand Nuijen, Dutch land- and seascape painter (born 1813)
* June 4 – Cornelia Scheffer, Dutch painter and portrait miniaturist (born 1769)
* July 8 – John Laporte, English landscape painter and etcher (born 1761)
* September 4 – Hendrik Voogd, Dutch painter and printmaker active in Italy (born 1768)
* September 10 – Pieter Fontijn, Dutch painter and drawer (born 1773)
* September 30 – John Thirtle, English watercolour painter and frame-maker (born 1777)
* November 15 – Giocondo Albertolli, Swiss-born architect, painter and sculptor active in Italy (born 1743)
* December – William Sadler, Irish landscape painter (born 1782)
* December 22 – Cornelis van Spaendonck, Dutch painter (born 1756)
* date unknown – Paolo Vincenzo Bonomini, Italian portrait and caricature painter (born 1757)