1857 in art

Events

• June 22 – The South Kensington Museum, predecessor of the Victoria and Albert Museum, is opened by Queen Victoria in London.
• Lewis Carroll meets John Ruskin and begins to associate with the Pre-Raphaelites. In the same year, Ruskin publishes his Political Economy of Art.

  Exhibitions

• May 5 – October 17 – The Art Treasures of Great Britain exhibition is held in Manchester, one of the largest such displays of all time. Photographs are admitted.

  Works

• Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot – The Destruction of Sodom and Le concert champêtre
• Gustave Courbet – :File:Louis Guéymard as Robert le Diable by Gustave Courbet - The Metropolitan Museum of Art 436015.jpg|Louis Guéymard as Robert le Diable
• Thomas Couture
• * :File:Thomas Couture - The Supper after the Masked Ball.jpg|The Supper after the Masked Ball
• * :File:Le Duel après le bal masqué - Thomas Couture - Wallace Collection.jpg|The Duel after the Masked Ball
• Jean-Léon Gérôme – The Duel After the Masquerade
• Hiroshige – Prints from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo including Plum Park in Kameido and Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi bridge and Atake
• Arthur Hughes – The Mother's Grave
• Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov – The Appearance of Christ Before the People
• Rudolf Koller – :File:Krautgarten 1857.jpg|Cow in a Vegetable Garden
• Benjamin Williams Leader – :File:Leader Benjamin Williams A Quiet Pool in Glenfalloch.jpg|A Quiet Pool in Glenfalloch
• John Frederick Lewis – :File:John Frederick Lewis 004.jpg|The Coffee Bearer
• Octave Penguilly L'Haridon – :File:Combat des Trente.jpg|Combat of the Thirty
• Daniel Maclise – Peter the Great at Deptford Dockyard
• John Everett Millais – '
• Jean-François Millet – The Gleaners and original version of The Angelus
• Philip Richard Morris – '
• Henry Nelson O'Neil – :File:Henry Nelson O'Neil - Eastward Ho! - 1857.jpg|Eastward Ho!
• Emily Mary Osborn – Nameless and Friendless
• O. G. Rejlander – The Two Ways of Life
• Ernst Friedrich August Rietschel – Goethe–Schiller Monument
• Raden Saleh – The Arrest of Pangeran Diponegoro
• Jozef Van Lerius – :File:Henriette Mayer van den Bergh - Van Lerius.jpg|Portrait of Henriette Mayer van den Bergh
• Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller – :File:Waldmüller - Am Fronleichnamsmorgen.jpeg|Corpus Christi Morning
• Henry Wallis – The Stonebreaker
• August Wredow – Iris Takes the Fallen Hero to Olympus

  Births

• February 12 – Eugène Atget, French photographer
• May 17 – Mary Devens, American pictorial photographer
• July 30 – Lucy Bacon, American Impressionist painter
• July 31 – Adolphe Willette, French illustrator
• September 10 – Adolphe Demange, French portrait painter
• September 22 – Étienne Terrus, French painter
• October 23 – Juan Luna, Filipino painter
• November 18 – Stanhope Forbes, British painter of the Newlyn school
• December 7 – Uroš Predić, one of the top three Serbian Realist painters, along with Paja Jovanović and Đorđe Krstić
• December 22 – W. W. Quatremain, English landscape painter
• date unknown – Esther Kenworthy Waterhouse, English flower painter

  Deaths

• January 30 – Agostino Aglio, Italian painter, decorator, and engraver
• March 18 – Nathan Cooper Branwhite, English miniature portrait painter, watercolourist and engraver
• May 1 – Frederick Scott Archer, English sculptor and photographic pioneer
• May 16 – Vasily Tropinin, Russian painter
• June 11 – Moritz Retzsch, German painter and etcher
• October 10 – Thomas Crawford, American sculptor
• October 14 – Johan Christian Dahl, Norwegian landscape painter
• October 27 – John Blennerhassett Martin, American painter, engraver and lithographer
• November 14 – Cornelis Kruseman, Dutch painter
• December 3 – Christian Daniel Rauch, German sculptor
• December 16 – William Havell, English landscape painter, part of the Havell family
• December 23 – Achille Devéria, French portrait painter and lithographer
• date unknown
• * Nicholas Joseph Crowley, Irish portrait painter
• * Luigi Rossini, Italian artist known for his etchings of ancient Roman architecture