1857 in art

The following is a list of events from 1857 in art.

• June 22 – The South Kensington Museum, predecessor of the Victoria and Albert Museum, is opened by Queen Victoria in London.^[1]
• Lewis Carroll meets John Ruskin and begins to associate with the Pre-Raphaelites. In the same year, Ruskin publishes his Political Economy of Art.
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris and Pre-Raphaelite friends begin painting the Oxford Union murals; Jane Burden first models for them.

• May 5–October 17 – The Art Treasures of Great Britain exhibition is held in Manchester, one of the largest such displays of all time.^[2] Photographs are admitted.

• Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
  • Le concert champêtre (Musée Condé, Chantilly)
  • The Destruction of Sodom
• Gustave Courbet – Louis Guéymard as Robert le Diable
• Thomas Couture
  • The Supper after the Masked Ball
  • The Duel after the Masked Ball
• Jean-Léon Gérôme – The Duel After the Masquerade (Suite d'un bal masqué) (original version)
• Hiroshige – Prints from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo including Plum Park in Kameido and Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi bridge and Atake
• Robert Howlett – Isambard Kingdom Brunel Standing Before the Launching Chains of the Great Eastern (photograph)
• Arthur Hughes – The Mother's Grave
• Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov – The Appearance of Christ Before the People (begun 1837)
• Rudolf Koller – Cow in a Vegetable Garden (Die Kuh im Krautgarten)
• Benjamin Williams Leader – A Quiet Pool in Glenfalloch
• John Frederick Lewis – The Coffee Bearer
• Octave Penguilly L'Haridon – Combat of the Thirty
• Daniel Maclise – Peter the Great at Deptford Dockyard
• John Everett Millais – A Dream of the Past: Sir Isumbras at the Ford
• Jean-François Millet (both Musée d'Orsay, Paris)
  • The Angelus (original version)
  • The Gleaners
• Philip Richard Morris – The Good Samaritan
• Emily Mary Osborn – Nameless and Friendless
• O. G. Rejlander – The Two Ways of Life (allegorical photomontage)
• Ernst Friedrich August Rietschel – Goethe–Schiller Monument
• Raden Saleh – The Arrest of Pangeran Diponegoro
• Jozef Van Lerius – Portrait of Henriette Mayer van den Bergh
• Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller – Corpus Christi Morning
• Henry Wallis – The Stonebreaker
• August Wredow – Iris Takes the Fallen Hero to Olympus (sculpture, Berlin)

• February 12 – Eugène Atget, French photographer (died 1927)
• May 17 – Mary Devens, American pictorial photographer (died 1920)
• July 30 – Lucy Bacon, American Impressionist painter (died 1932)
• July 31 – Adolphe Willette, French illustrator (died 1926)
• September 10 – Adolphe Demange, French portrait painter (died 1927)
• September 22 – Étienne Terrus, French painter (died 1922)
• October 23 – Juan Luna, Filipino painter (died 1899)
• November 18 – Stanhope Forbes, British painter of the Newlyn school (died 1947)
• November 21 – Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, Portuguese painter (died 1929)^[3]
• December 7 – Uroš Predić, one of the top three Serbian Realist painters, along with Paja Jovanović and Đorđe Krstić (died 1953)
• December 8 – Anna Bilińska, Polish painter (died 1893)
• December 22 – W. W. Quatremain, English landscape painter (died 1930)
• December 23 – Georges Picard, French decorative artist and illustrator (died 1943)
• date unknown – Esther Kenworthy Waterhouse, English flower painter (died 1944)

• January 30 – Agostino Aglio, Italian painter, decorator, and engraver (born 1777)
• March 18 – Nathan Cooper Branwhite, English miniature portrait painter, watercolourist and engraver (born c.1775)
• May 1 – Frederick Scott Archer, English sculptor and photographic pioneer (born 1813)
• May 16 – Vasily Tropinin, Russian painter (born 1776)
• June 11 – Moritz Retzsch, German painter and etcher (born 1779)
• October 10 – Thomas Crawford, American sculptor (born 1814)
• October 14 – Johan Christian Dahl, Norwegian landscape painter (born 1788)
• October 27 – John Blennerhassett Martin, American painter, engraver and lithographer (born 1797)
• November 14 – Cornelis Kruseman, Dutch painter (born 1797)
• December 3 – Christian Daniel Rauch, German sculptor (born 1777)
• December 16 – William Havell, English landscape painter, part of the Havell family (born 1782)
• December 23 – Achille Devéria, French portrait painter and lithographer (born 1800)
• date unknown
  • Nicholas Joseph Crowley, Irish portrait painter (born 1819)
  • Luigi Rossini, Italian artist known for his etchings of ancient Roman architecture (born 1790)