1784 in art

Events from the year 1784 in art.

Events

• April 26 – The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1784 opens at Somerset House in London. After a dispute Thomas Gainsborough's paintings are withdrawn and he refuses to exhibit at the academy again for the remainder of his career
• July 30 – Adolf Ulrik Wertmüller is elected to the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in Paris.^[1]
• date unknown – Thomas Chippendale, the younger, begins exhibiting his paintings at the Royal Academy.

Works

Jacques-Louis David – Oath of the Horatii

• John Bacon – seated sculpture of Sir William Blackstone (Codrington Library, All Souls College, Oxford, England)
• James Barry – The Progress of Human Culture (completed series in Great Room of Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in London)
• Antonio Carnicero – Ascent of Monsieur Bouclé's Montgolfier Balloon in the Gardens of Aranjuez
• Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun – Portrait of the Comte de Vaudreuil
• Jacques-Louis David – Oath of the Horatii (Musée du Louvre, Paris)
• Jean Germain Drouais – Christ and the Canaanite Woman^[2]
• Joseph Duplessis –Portrait of Joseph-Marie Vien
• Henry Fuseli – Lady Macbeth Sleepwalking
• Thomas Gainsborough
  • Portrait of the Earl of Buckinghamshire and his wife Caroline Connolly
  • Frances Browne, Mrs John Douglas
  • The Baillie Family
  • Portrait of Lord Rawdon
  • The Three Eldest Princesses
• Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
  • Two portraits of the Comte de Vaudreuil
  • Portrait of Charles Alexandre de Calonne
• Philip James de Loutherbourg – Dovedale in Derbyshire
• James Northcote – Portrait of Sir Ralph Milbanke^[3]
• Charles Willson Peale
  • General Benjamin Lincoln
  • Washington, Lafayette & Tilghman at Yorktown (the "Annapolis portrait")
• John Francis Rigaud – Samson and Delilah
• George Romney – Sir William Hamilton
• Gilbert Stuart – Portrait of Joshua Reynolds
• John Webber – Death of Cook
• Johann Zoffany – Portrait of Claud Alexander with his brother Boyd, attended by an Indian servant

Awards

Births

• January 21 – Peter De Wint, English landscape painter (died 1849)
• February 29 – Leo von Klenze, German neoclassicist architect, painter and writer (died 1864)
• May 4 – Rubens Peale, American artist and museum director (died 1865)
• June 4 – François Rude, French sculptor (died 1855)
• July 11 – Paul Joseph Gabriël, Dutch painter and sculptor (died 1833)
• September 23 – Peter von Cornelius, German painter (died 1867)
• October – Sarah Biffen, disabled English painter (died 1850)
• November 3 – Antonín Mánes, Czech painter (died 1843)
• November 21 – Gustaf Wilhelm Finnberg, Finnish painter (died 1833)
• November 28 – Claude Victor de Boissieu, French artist and local politician (died 1868)
• December 26 – Antoni Brodowski, Polish Neo-classicist painter and pedagogue (died 1832)
• date unknown
  • John Cox Dillman Engleheart, English miniature painter (died 1862)
  • William Essex, English enamel-painter (died 1869)
  • Charles Gough, English landscape artist (died 1805)
  • Ernestine Panckoucke, French botanical illustrator and flower painter (died 1860)
  • Stepan Pimenov, Russian sculptor (died 1833)
  • Jacopo Tumicelli, Italian portrait miniature painter (died 1825)

Deaths

• January 17 – Yosa Buson, Japanese poet and painter (born 1716)^[4]
• April 10 – Simon Fokke, Dutch designer, etcher and engraver (born 1712)^[5]
• May 29 – George Barret Sr., Irish landscape artist best known for his portraits of the British countryside (born 1730)
• July 15 – Johann Baptist Straub, German Rococo sculptor (born 1704)
• August 10 – Allan Ramsay, Scottish portrait-painter (born 1713)^[6]
• August 14 – Nathaniel Hone, British portrait painter (born 1718)
• September 7 – Andrea Casali – Italian painter of the Rococo period (born 1705)^[7]
• September 15 – Nicolas Bernard Lépicié, French painter (born 1735)
• October 29 – Giuseppe Zais, Italian painter of landscapes (vedutisti) (born 1709)
• date unknown
  • Antonio Beltrami, Italian painter (born 1724)
  • Giuseppe Bottani, Italian painter (born 1717)
  • Stefano Torelli, Italian painter of altar-pieces and ceiling decorations (born 1712)
• probable – John Foldsone, English portrait painter (born unknown)^[8]

References

1. Conrad, Henry Clay (1908). History of the State of Delaware. Published by the author. p. 1119.
2. https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010066869
3. https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:977
4. "Buson (Japanese artist and poet) – Britannica Online Encyclopedia". Britannica.com. Retrieved 2013-02-17.
5. "Simon Fokke". RKD. Retrieved 14 January 2026.
6.  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Ramsay, Allan". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 22 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 878–879.
7. Ingamells, John (2004). "Casali, Andrea". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/4849. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
8. "Foldsone, John" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.