1887 in art

The year 1887 in art involved some significant events.

• February (approx.) – Fourth annual exhibition of
  Georges-Pierre Seurat.^[2] The major work shown is Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.^[3]
• 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 (approx.) –
  Gauguin.^[4]
• Sunflowers series of paintings in Paris
  .
• Walter Crane illustrates "The Architecture of Art" (included in his Claims of Decorative Art, printed later).
• Charles Lang Freer's first Asian art purchase is a painted Japanese fan.
• Sir
  Pears soap.^[5]

• Atlanta Cyclorama (approximate completion date)^[6]
• Lawrence Alma-Tadema – The Women of Amphissa
• Otto Bache – Christian IV's Coronation, 1596
• William Gerard Barry – Time Flies
• Albert Bettannier – The Black Spot (La tache noire) (or The Geography Lesson)
• Anna Bilińska – Self-Portrait with Apron and Brushes
• British coinage
• Alexander Milne Calder – Major General George Gordon Meade
• Thomas Shields Clarke – A Fool's Fool
• Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret – Breton Women at a Pardon
• Pierre Puvis de Chavannes – Young Girls at the Seaside
• Frank Duveneck – Elizabeth Boott Duveneck
• Jean-Léon Gérôme – Omphale (sculpture)
• Edward John Gregory – Marooned and Marooning
• Atkinson Grimshaw
  • Canny Glasgow
  • Liverpool Quay by Moonlight
  • Prince's Dock, Hull (later version, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull)
• Max Klinger – The Judgement of Paris (c. 1886–87)
• Léon Augustin Lhermitte – The Gleaners
• John Longstaff – Breaking the News
• Matthijs Maris – The Dreamer
• Albert Joseph Moore – Midsummer
• Walter Osborne – On Suffolk Sands
• Hanna Hirsch-Pauli – Breakfast Time
  (Frukostdags)
• Eilif Peterssen – Summer Evening and Nocturne
• Camille Pissarro – Late Afternoon in Our Meadow
• Edward Poynter – Corner of the Marketplace
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir – Les Grandes Baigneuses
• Ilya Repin – Portrait of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy
• Theodore Roussel – Reading Girl
• Valentin Serov
  • Girl with Peaches («Девочка с персиками», Devochka s Persikami)
  • Self-portrait
• Paul Signac – The Town Beach, Collioure
• Solomon Joseph Solomon – Samson and Delilah
• Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – A Montrouge–Rosa La Rouge^[7]
• Vincent van Gogh
  • Coin de Jardin avec Papillions ^[8]
  • Crab on its Back
  • Portrait of Alexander Reid
• George Frederic Watts – Mrs. G. F. Watts
• Henry Tanworth Wells – Victoria Regina (second version)

• January 3 – August Macke, German Expressionist painter (died on active service 1914).^[9]
• February 5 – Albert Paris Gütersloh, Austrian painter and writer (died 1973).
• March 23 – Juan Gris, Spanish painter and sculptor (died 1927).^[10]
• March 25 – Josef Čapek, Czech painter (died 1945).
• April 29 – Stanley Cursiter, Scottish painter and curator (died 1976).
• May – Jacob Steinhardt, German-born Israeli painter and woodcut artist (died 1968).
• May 12 – Leo Michelson, Latvian-American painter and sculptor (died 1978).
• May 16 – Laura Wheeler Waring, African-America painter (died 1948)^[11]
• May 21
  • Barker Fairley, English-born Canadian painter, writer, and educator (died 1986).
  • Paul Maze, French-born Post-Impressionist painter (died 1979).
• May 22 – Arthur Cravan, born Fabian Avenarius Lloyd, Swiss-born Dadaist writer, poet, artist and boxer (disappeared 1918)^[12]
• May 30 – Alexander Archipenko, Ukrainian sculptor (died 1964).
• June 20 – Kurt Schwitters, German Dadaist painter and writer (died 1948).

• July 7 – Marc Chagall, Russian-Belarusian-French painter (died 1985).
• July 28 – Marcel Duchamp, influential French artist (died 1968).^[13]
• August 31 – William McMillan, Scottish sculptor (died 1977).
• September 24 – Frank Newbould, English poster artist (died 1951).
• October 6 – Le Corbusier, French architect and painter (died 1965).^[14]
• October 9 – Manuel Ortiz de Zárate, Chilean painter (died 1946).
• October 13 – Kate Lechmere, English painter associated with the Vorticists and milliner (died 1976).
• November 1 – L. S. Lowry, English painter (died 1976).^[15]
• Amadeo de Souza Cardoso, Portuguese painter (died 1918
  ).
• November 15 – Georgia O'Keeffe, American painter (died 1986).^[16]
• December 14 – Xul Solar, Argentine painter, sculptor and writer (died 1963).
• December 29 – Nell Walden, Swedish-born abstract artist and collector (died 1975)

• March 24 – Ivan Kramskoi, painter and art critic (born 1837)
• May 20 – Paul Emile Chappuis, photographer (born 1816)
• sculptor and painter (born 1824
  )
• June 5 – Hans von Marées, painter (born 1837)
• July 8 – John Wright Oakes, landscape painter (born 1820)
• July 17 – Nicaise de Keyser, painter (born 1813)
• August 19 – Alvan Clark, American astronomer, telescope maker, portrait painter and engraver (born 1804)
• December 19
  • August Becker, painter (born 1821)
  • François Bonvin, realist painter (born 1817)
• date unknown – Giovanni Battista Amendola, sculptor (born 1848)