Events from the year 1869 in art.

• January 30 – New British magazine Vanity Fair publishes the first of a long series of colour lithographic caricatures of public figures, initially by Carlo Pellegrini, portraying Benjamin Disraeli.
• January 31 – The Société Libre des Beaux-Arts publishes its manifesto.
• July 30 – Vincent van Gogh starts his apprenticeship with the art dealers Goupil & Cie in The Hague (in which his uncle is a partner).
• December 4 – The weekly illustrated newspaper The Graphic is first published by engraver William Luson Thomas in London.

• Lawrence Alma-Tadema – The Wine Shop
• Peter Nicolai Arbo – Valkyrie
• Thomas Armstrong – The Hay Field
• Frédéric Bazille – Scène d'été
• Knud Bergslien – Birkebeiners on Skis Crossing the Mountain with the Royal Child
• Albert Bierstadt
  • Emigrants Crossing the Plains
  • Mount Hood
• William-Adolphe Bouguereau
  • The Elder Sister
  • The Knitting Girl
• Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux – La Danse (sculpture for Palais Garnier, Paris)
• Albert Charles Challen – Mary Seacole
• Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot – Femme Lisant (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
• Gustave Courbet – The Cliff at Etretat after the Storm (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)
• Edgar Degas – Interior (Philadelphia Museum of Art)
• Lowes Cato Dickinson – Portrait of Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
• Gustave Doré – Andromeda
• Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Nouÿ – The supper of Beaucaire, 28 July 1793
• Luke Fildes – Houseless and Hungry (engraving for The Graphic)
• Atkinson Grimshaw – Autumn Glory: The Old Mill
• George P. A. Healy – Abraham Lincoln
• Jean-Jacques Henner – Woman on a Black Divan
• Daniel Huntington – Sowing the Word
• Frederick Richard Lee – Morning in the Meadows
• Frederic Leighton – Daedalus and Icarus
• Édouard Manet
  • The Balcony (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)
  • Beach at Boulogne-sur-Mer (Private collection)
  • The Departure of the Folkestone Boat (Philadelphia Museum of Art)
  • The Execution of Emperor Maximilian (Kunsthalle Mannheim)
  • Moonlight over the Port of Boulogne (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)
  • The Reading (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)
  • Repose (Berthe Morisot) (Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, Rhode Island)
• Claude Monet
  • Bathers at La Grenouillère
  • La Grenouillère
  • The Magpie
• Albert Joseph Moore
  • The Quartette
  • A Venus
• Gustave Moreau – Europa and the Bull
• Mihály Munkácsy – Last Day of a Condemned Man
• Erskine Nicol – A Nip Against the Cold
• Edward Poynter – Saint George for England (mosaic for Palace of Westminster)
• Thomas Stuart Smith – The Pipe of Freedom
• Thomas Thornycroft – Statue of Richard Grosvenor, Second Marquess of Westminster (marble, Grosvenor Park, Chester, England)
• W. L. Wyllie – Dawn after a Storm

• January 15 – Stanisław Wyspiański, Polish playwright, painter and designer (died 1907)
• February 7 – Xavier Martínez, Mexican-born American painter (died 1943)
• February 10 – Royal Cortissoz, American art critic (died 1948)
• March 1 – Pietro Canonica, Italian sculptor (died 1959)
• March 19 – Józef Mehoffer, Polish painter and decorative artist (died 1946)
• April 6
  • Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté, Canadian painter and sculptor (died 1937)
  • Louis Raemaekers, Dutch painter and cartoonist (died 1956)
• April 11 – Maximilian Liebenwein, Austrian painter and illustrator (died 1926)
• June 7 – Lamorna Birch, born Samuel John Birch, English painter (died 1955)
• June 21 – Zaida Ben-Yusuf, born Esther Zeghdda Ben Youseph Nathan, English-born American portrait photographer (died 1933)
• June 27 – Kate Carew, born Mary Williams, American caricaturist (died 1961)
• July 20 – Charles Pillet, French sculptor and engraver (died 1960)
• October 14 – Joseph Duveen, English art dealer (died 1939)
• October 22 – August Gaul, German sculptor (died 1922)
• November 21 – Zaida Ben-Yusuf, English-born American portrait photographer (died 1933)
• December 1 – Eligiusz Niewiadomski, Polish painter, critic and assassin (executed 1923)
• December 18 – Edward Willis Redfield, American impressionist landscape painter (died 1965)
• December 31 – Henri Matisse, French painter (died 1954)
• date unknown – William Lee Hankey, English painter and illustrator (died 1952)

• January 8 – Paul Huet, French painter (born 1803)
• June 10 – Frederick Yeates Hurlstone, English painter (born 1800)
• July 4
  • Johann Friedrich Overbeck, German painter (born 1789)
  • Édouard Pingret, French painter and lithographer (born 1785)
• July 10 – Jan Wnęk, Polish carpenter and sculptor (aviation accident) (born 1828)
• August 26 – Baron Leys, Belgian painter (born 1815)
• August 8 – Roger Fenton, English photographer (born 1819)
• October 12 – François-Joseph Navez, Belgian neo-classical painter (born 1787)
• November 22 – William Hamlin, American engraver, first engraver for the state of Rhode Island (born 1772)
• December – Thomas Stuart Smith, Scottish painter (born 1815)
• December 8 – Samuel Jackson, English topographical painter, "father" of the Bristol School of painters (born 1794)
• December 29 – William Essex, English enamel-painter (born 1784)
• date unknown
  • Giuseppe Bisi, Italian painter, mainly of landscapes (born 1787)
  • Louis-Henri Brévière, French wood-engraver (born 1797)