The year 1891 in art involved some significant events.

• May 10 – Danish sculptor Anne Marie Brodersen marries her compatriot, the classical composer Carl Nielsen, in St Mark's English Church, Florence, the couple having first met on March 2 in Paris.
• June – Sidney Paget produces his first illustrations for Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories in The Strand Magazine.
• Henri Matisse begins his studies at the Académie Julian.
• Correspondence of Marie Bashkirtseff and Gustave Flaubert is published.
• Paul Gauguin sails to French Polynesia.
• Impressionist Armand Guillaumin wins 100,000 francs in the French state lottery and is able to devote himself to painting full-time.
• Félix Vallotton makes his first woodcuts.

• William-Adolphe Bouguereau
  • The Goose Girl
  • Work Interrupted
• Frank Bramley – For Of Such Is The Kingdom Of Heaven
• Edward Burne-Jones – Sponsa de Libano
• Philip Hermogenes Calderon – St. Elizabeth of Hungary
• Milly Childers – Hugh Culling Eardley Childers
• Pierre Puvis de Chavannes – The Shepherd's Song
• Édouard Detaille – Vive L'Empereur: charge du quatrième hussards à la bataille de Friedland, 14 juin 1807
• Alexander Doyle – Statue of Henry W. Grady
• Thomas Eakins – Miss Amelia Van Buren (Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.)
• James Ensor – Skeletons Fighting Over a Pickled Herring (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels)
• Luke Fildes – The Doctor
• Akseli Gallen-Kallela – Aino Triptych (second version)
• Paul Gauguin – Tahitian Women on the Beach
• J. W. Godward
  • Innocent Amusement
  • A Pompeian Lady
  • The Sweet Siesta of a Summer Day
• Hubert von Herkomer
  • In the Black Country
  • On Strike
• Carl Kahler – My Wife's Lovers
• Benjamin Williams Leader – The Excavation of the Manchester Ship Canal: Eastham Cutting with Mount Manisty in the Distance
• Sir Frederic Leighton – Perseus and Andromeda
• John Henry Lorimer – The Ordination of Elders in a Scottish Kirk
• Frederick William MacMonnies – Statue of James S. T. Stranahan
• Jan Matejko – Constitution of May 3, 1791
• Claude Monet
  • The Haystack Series
  • The Poplar Series
• Edvard Munch – Melancholy (first version)
• Mikhail Nesterov – The Vision of the Youth Bartholomew
• Henrietta Rae – Miss Nightingale at Scutari (1854)
• Paul Ranson – Witches Around the Fire
• Ilya Repin – Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks
• Tom Roberts – A break away!
• Henri Rousseau – Tiger in a Tropical Storm
• Augustus Saint-Gaudens – Adams Memorial
• John Singer Sargent – Egyptians Raising Water from the Nile
• Giovanni Segantini
  • Midday in the Alps
  • The Punishment of Lust
• Georges Seurat – completion of The Circus (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)
• John "Hans" Staehli – Chiming Fountain, Portland, Oregon
• Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Moulin Rouge: La Goulue (color lithographic poster)
• Edward Arthur Walton – Bluette
• J. W. Waterhouse – Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses
• George Frederic Watts – After the Deluge

• January 21 – Franz Sedlacek, Austrian painter (died 1945)
• February 13 – Grant Wood, American painter (died 1942)
• April 2 – Max Ernst, German painter, sculptor, graphic artist and poet (died 1976)
• April 4 – Virgilio Guidi, Italian painter (died 1984)
• April 7 – David Low, New Zealand-born editorial cartoonist (died 1963)
• May 10 – Mahmoud Mokhtar, Egyptian sculptor (died 1934)
• June 8 – Audrey Munson, American actress and artist's model (died 1996)
• June 19 – John Heartfield, born Helmut Herzfeld, German graphic designer (died 1968)
• June 30 - Stanley Spencer, English painter (died 1959)
• August 15 – Iva Despić-Simonović, Croatian sculptor (died 1961)
• August 25 – Alberto Savinio, Italian writer, painter and composer (died 1952)
• September 22 – Alma Thomas, African American abstract expressionist painter (died 1978)
• October 7 – Charles R. Chickering, American illustrator (died 1970)
• October 11 – George Ault, American painter (died 1948)
• December 2 – Otto Dix, German painter and graphic artist (died 1969)
• December 9 – Mark Gertler, British painter (died 1939)

• January 27 – Jervis McEntee, American painter of the Hudson River School (born 1828)
• January 30 – Charles Joshua Chaplin, French painter and engraver (born 1825)
• January 31 – Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, French classicist painter (born 1815)
• February 9 – Johan Jongkind, Dutch painter (born 1819)
• March 19 – Ernest Hoschedé, French businessman and collector of Impressionist paintings (born 1837)
• March 26 – Herman Frederik Carel ten Kate, Dutch watercolorist (born 1822)
• March 29 – Georges Seurat, French Post-Impressionist painter (born 1859)
• April 5 – Daniel Cottier, Scottish-born artist and designer (born 1837)
• April 14 – Carlos Luis de Ribera y Fieve, Spanish painter, son of Juan Antonio Ribera (born 1815)
• May 12 – Louisa Beresford, Marchioness of Waterford, British Pre-Raphaelite watercolourist (born 1818)
• May 16 – John Banvard, American panorama painter (born 1815)
• September 5 – Jules-Élie Delaunay, French academic painter (born 1828)
• September 6 – Elise Arnberg, Swedish miniaturist and photographer (born 1826)
• September 9 – William Theed, English sculptor (born 1804)
• September 11 – Théodule Ribot, French realist painter (born 1823)
• September 15 – John Steell, Scottish portrait sculptor (born 1804)
• October 30 – Truman Seymour, American soldier and painter (born 1824)