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.

Works

Turner – The Fighting Temeraire

• John Bell – Babes in the Wood (sculpture)
• Edwin Landseer – Dignity and Impudence
• Carl Spitzweg – The Poor Poet
• J. M. W. Turner
  • Modern Rome – Campo Vaccino
  • The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up, 1838
• William Wyon – Una and the Lion (design for five pounds British gold coin)

Births

• January 19 – Paul Cézanne, French painter (d. 1906)
• March 16 – John Butler Yeats, Irish painter (d. 1922)
• May 24 – Arthur Quartley, painter (d. 1886)
• September 1 – Charles Edward Perugini, English painter (d. 1918)
• October 2 – Hans Thoma, German painter (d.1924)
• October 29 – Kate Dickens Perugini, English painter (d. 1929)
• October 30 – Alfred Sisley, impressionist painter (d. 1899)
• November 20 – Christian Wilberg, painter (d. 1882)
• date unknown – François Salle, French realist painter (d. 1899)

Deaths

• January 12 – Joseph Anton Koch, Austrian painter of the German Romantic movement (b. 1768)
• January 14 – John Wesley Jarvis, American painter (b. 1781)
• January 28 – Sir William Beechey, portrait painter (b. 1753)
• February 6 – François Louis Thomas Francia, landscape painter (b. 1772)
• February 8 – Giovanni Cendramini, Italian painter and engraver (b. 1760)
• February 21 – John Charles Felix Rossi, sculptor (b. 1769)
• November 15 – Giocondo Albertolli, Swiss-born architect, painter, and sculptor who was active in Italy (b. 1743)
• December 22 – Cornelis van Spaendonck, Dutch painter (b. 1756)
• date unknown – William Sadler, Irish landscape painter (b. 1782)