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.^[1]

Works

• John Bell – Babes in the Wood (sculpture)
• Sara Anne Bright – The Leaf (photogenic drawing)^[2]
• Francesco Hayez – Reclining Odalisque
• George Hayter – The Coronation of Queen Victoria
• Edwin Landseer – Dignity and Impudence
• 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 and his reception in front of the Thiseion temple in 1833
• Sir David Wilkie – General Sir David Baird Discovering the Body of Sultan Tippoo Sahib after having Captured Seringapatam, on the 4th May, 1799
• William Wyon – Una and the Lion (design for five pounds British gold coin)

Births

• January 19 – Paul Cézanne, French painter (died 1906)^[3]
• 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)^[4]
• December 22 – Cornelis van Spaendonck, Dutch painter (born 1756)
• date unknown – Paolo Vincenzo Bonomini, Italian portrait and caricature painter (born 1757)