Events from the year 1865 in art.

• July 21 – Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) photographs Effie Gray Millais, John Everett Millais, and their daughters Effie and Mary at 7 Cromwell Place, London.
• Ford Madox Brown completes his painting Work after thirteen years.
• Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. install the stained-glass east window in the chapel of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, England, designed by Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and Philip Webb.
• Édouard Manet's painting Olympia is first exhibited, at the Salon (Paris), and causes controversy.^[1]
• Jean-François Millet's painting The Angelus (L'Angélus) is first exhibited and becomes very popular in France.^[2]
• The Bargello in Florence becomes an art museum.

• Lawrence Alma-Tadema – An Egyptian at his Doorway
• Albert Bierstadt
  • Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California
  • Staubbach Falls, near Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland
• Ford Madox Brown – Work
• Constantino Brumidi – The Apotheosis of Washington (fresco in United States Capitol rotunda)
• Augustus Burke – Connemara Girl
• Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris – The Crucifixion (stained-glass window for chapel of St Edmund Hall, Oxford)
• Frederic Edwin Church – Aurora Borealis
• Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot – Ville d'Avray
• Gustave Courbet
  • Portrait of Countess Karoly
  • Le ruisseau noir
• Honoré Daumier – The Third-Class Carriage (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa)
• Edgar Degas – Medieval War Scene, his first painting exhibited at the Salon (Paris)
• Thomas Faed – The Last of the Clan
• William Powell Frith
  • Mary Elizabeth Maxwell (née Braddon)
  • The Marriage of the Prince of Wales
• Jean-Léon Gérôme – Prayer
• Henri Harpignies – Les Corbeaux
• Henry Holiday – Stained glass windows for chapel of Worcester College, Oxford
• Winslow Homer – The Veteran in a New Field
• Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann – A Wounded Danish Soldier
• Sir Edwin Henry Landseer – Lady Godiva's Prayer (approximate date)
• Andrew and George Anderson Lawson – Wellington's Column, Liverpool
• Benjamin Williams Leader – Autumn's Last Gleam
• Edward Lear – Jerusalem (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)
• Thomas Le Clear – Interior with Portraits

• Édouard Manet
  • Angélina (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)
  • Bull-Fighting Scene (Private collection)
  • The Mocking of Christ (Art Institute of Chicago)
  • The Tragic Actor (Rouvière as Hamlet) (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)
• George Hemming Mason – The Cast Shoe
• Adolph Menzel – The Coronation of King William I in Königsberg 1861
• John Everett Millais
  • Esther
  • Waking
• Aimé Millet – Vercingétorix monument
• Henry Moore – The Rainbow
• Gustave Moreau – Thracian Girl Carrying the Head of Orpheus on His Lyre
• Edward Poynter – Faithful unto Death
• Val Prinsep – The Lady of the Tooti-Nameh or The legend of the parrot
• Illarion Pryanishnikov – Jokers: Gostiny Dvor in Moscow
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti – The Blue Bower
• Alfred Sisley – Avenue of Chestnut Trees near La Celle-Saint-Cloud
• John Tenniel – illustrations to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

  

• S. S. Teulon – Buxton Memorial Fountain (Westminster)
• James McNeill Whistler – Rose and Silver: The Princess from the Land of Porcelain
• Franz Xaver Winterhalter – Emperor Franz Joseph
• Thomas Woolner – Godley Statue

• January 19 – Valentin Serov, Russian portrait painter (died 1911)
• January 23 – Connie Gilchrist, English child actress and model (died 1946)
• April 26 – Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Finnish painter (died 1931)
• May 5 – Albert Aurier, French poet, art critic and painter, devoted to Symbolism (died 1892)
• June 25 – Robert Henri, American painter, leader of the Ash Can School (died 1929)
• June 26 – Bernard Berenson, Lithuanian-born American art historian (died 1959)
• June 28 – David Young Cameron, Scottish painter (died 1945)
• August 2 – John Radecki, Polish-born Australian stained glass artist (died 1955)
• August 20 – Frank DuMond, American painter, illustrator and teacher (died 1951)
• September 23 – Suzanne Valadon, French artists' model and painter (died 1938)
• November 11 – Donatus Buongiorno, Italian-born American painter (died 1935)
• December 28 – Félix Vallotton, Swiss painter and graphic artist (died 1925)
• date unknown – Adelaïde Alsop Robineau, American painter and potter (died 1929)

• January 10 – William Fox-Strangways, 4th Earl of Ilchester, English diplomat and art collector (born 1795)
• January 12 – Kunisada, Japanese designer of ukiyo-e woodblock prints (born 1786)
• January 19 – Clementina Maude, Viscountess Hawarden, British portrait photographer (born 1822)
• January 21 – Johan Erik Lindh, Swedish painter and former decorative painter who moved to Finland (born 1793)
• January 23 – Joseph-Désiré Court, French painter of historical subjects and portraits (born 1797)
• February 21 – Constant Troyon, French painter (born 1810)
• April 21 – Josef Matěj Navrátil, Czech painter of murals and frescoes (born 1798)
• April 28 – Robert William Sievier, English engraver, sculptor and inventor (born 1794)
• June 18 – Antoine Wiertz, Belgian painter (born 1806)
• July 11 – Ammi Phillips, American folk portrait painter (born 1788)
• August 14 – Fitz Henry Lane, American Luminist marine painter (born 1804)
• August 23 – Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Austrian painter and writer (born 1793)
• September 17 – John Neagle, American portrait painter (born 1796)
• September 23 – John Frederick Herring, Sr., English painter, signmaker and coachman in Victorian England (born 1795)
• September 29 – François Joseph Heim, French painter (born 1787)
• November 1 – Charles-François Lebœuf, French sculptor (born 1792)
• December 24 – Charles Lock Eastlake, English painter and art collector (born 1793)
• date unknown
  • Tivadar Alconiere, Hungarian painter (born 1797)
  • Michael Hanhart, English lithographer and chromolithographer (born 1788)