1887 in art

Events

• February ' – Fourth annual exhibition of Les XX, at the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in Brussels. Artists invited to show in addition to members of the group include Walter Sickert, Camille Pissarro, Berthe Morisot and Georges-Pierre Seurat. The major work shown is Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.
• March 26 – June 8 – Third exhibition by the Société des Artistes Indépendants in Paris.
• November 14 – Paul Gauguin and Charles Laval return to Paris from Martinique where they have been living since leaving Panama in June.
• December ' – Vincent van Gogh arranges an exhibition of paintings by himself, Émile Bernard, Louis Anquetin, and Toulouse-Lautrec in the Restaurant du Chalet, 43 Avenue de Clichy, Montmartre, Paris. Bernard and Anquetin sell their first paintings; van Gogh exchanges work with Gauguin.
• Vincent van Gogh begins his first Sunflowers series of paintings in Paris.
• Walter Crane illustrates "The Architecture of Art".
• Charles Lang Freer's first Asian art purchase is a painted Japanese fan.
• Sir John Everett Millais' painting Bubbles is acquired for advertising purposes by Pears soap.

  Awards

Works

• Atlanta Cyclorama
• Lawrence Alma-Tadema – :File:Women of Amfiss.jpg|The Women of Amphissa
• Otto Bache – :File:Coronation of Christian IV in 1596.jpg|Christian IV's Coronation, 1596
• William Gerard Barry – :File:William Gerard Barry - Time Flies.jpg|Time Flies
• Joseph Boehm – Jubilee Head of Queen Victoria on British coinage
• Thomas Shields Clarke – :File:'A Fool's Fool' by Thomas Shields Clarke.jpg|A Fool's Fool
• Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret – Breton Women at a Pardon
• Pierre Puvis de Chavannes – Young Girls at the Seaside
• Frank Duveneck – :File:Elizabeth Boott Duveneck.jpg|Elizabeth Boott Duveneck
• Jean-Léon Gérôme – Omphale
• Edward John Gregory – :File:Marooned by Edward J Gregory.jpg|Marooned and :File:Gregory, Marooning.jpg|Marooning
• Atkinson Grimshaw
• * :File:T00902 10.jpg|Liverpool Quay by Moonlight
• * Prince's Dock, Hull
• Max Klinger – :File:Max Klinger 002.jpg|The Judgement of Paris
• Léon Augustin Lhermitte – :File:Lhermitte - Les Glaneurs, 1887.jpg|The Gleaners
• John Longstaff – Breaking the News
• Albert Joseph Moore – Midsummer
• Walter Osborne – :File:Onsuffolksands.jpg|On Suffolk Sands
• Hanna Hirsch-Pauli – Breakfast Time
• Eilif Peterssen – Summer Evening and Nocturne
• Camille Pissarro – Late Afternoon in Our Meadow
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir – Les Grandes Baigneuses
• Ilya Repin – :File:Ilya Efimovich Repin - Portrait of Leo Tolstoy.jpg|Portrait of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy
• Theodore Roussel – :File:Theodor Roussel Reading Girl 1886.jpg|Reading Girl
• Valentin Serov
• * Girl with Peaches
• * :File:Serov Self.jpg|Self-portrait
• Paul Signac – :File:Paul Signac Collioure.jpg|The Town Beach, Collioure
• Solomon Joseph Solomon – :File:Solomon Samson and Delilah.jpg|Samson and Delilah
• Vincent van Gogh
• *Coin de Jardin avec Papillions
• *Crab on its Back
• George Frederic Watts – :File:Mrs-G -F -Watts--1887-large.jpg|Mrs. G. F. Watts
• Henry Tanworth Wells – :File:Victoriatothrone.jpg|Victoria Regina

  Births

January to June

• January 3 – August Macke, German Expressionist painter.
• February 5 – Albert Paris Gütersloh, Austrian painter and writer.
• March 23 – Juan Gris, Spanish painter and sculptor.
• March 25 – Josef Čapek, Czech painter.
• April 29 – Stanley Cursiter, Scottish painter and curator.
• May – Jacob Steinhardt, German-born Israeli painter and woodcut artist.
• May 12 – Leo Michelson, Latvian-American painter and sculptor.
• May 21
• * Barker Fairley, English-born Canadian painter, writer, and educator.
• * Paul Maze, French-born Post-Impressionist painter.
• May 30 – Alexander Archipenko, Ukrainian sculptor.
• June 20 – Kurt Schwitters, German Dadaist painter and writer.

  July to December

• July 7 – Marc Chagall, Russian-Belarusian-French painter.
• July 28 – Marcel Duchamp, influential French artist.
• September 24 – Frank Newbould, English poster artist.
• October 6 – Le Corbusier, French architect and painter.
• October 9 – Manuel Ortiz de Zárate, Chilean painter.
• October 13 – Kate Lechmere, English painter associated with the Vorticists and milliner.
• November 1 – L. S. Lowry, English painter.
• November 15 – Georgia O'Keeffe, American painter.

  Deaths

• March 24 – Ivan Kramskoi, painter and art critic
• May 20 - Paul Emile Chappuis, photographer
• June 4 – Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, French sculptor and painter
• June 5 – Hans von Marées, painter
• July 8 – John Wright Oakes, landscape painter
• July 17 – Nicaise de Keyser, painter
• August 19 – Alvan Clark, American astronomer, telescope maker, portrait painter and engraver
• December 19
• * August Becker, painter
• * François Bonvin, realist painter
• date unknown - Giovanni Battista Amendola, sculptor