Each year I celebrate the lives and works of artists with anniversaries. This coming year there are three major anniversaries: it’s the bicentenary of the untimely death of Théodore Géricault, the bicentenary of the birth of Jean-Léon Gérôme, and the bicentenary of the birth of Eugène Boudin.

26 January: in 1824, Jean Louis Théodore Géricault died. Born in 1791, he was a French painter who achieved fame and changed the course of narrative art in his vast painting of The Raft of the Medusa (1818-19), now in the Louvre.

1 February: in 1924, Maurice Brazil Prendergast died. Born in 1858 in St. John’s, Newfoundland, he was brought up in Boston, MA, and painted in post-impressionist style in both Europe and North America, where he became a member of the Eight, although he didn’t join the Ashcan School.

11 February: in 1924, Jean-François Raffaëlli died. Although his family were of Tuscan origin, he was born in Paris in 1850, where he studied briefly under Jean-Léon Gérôme. He became friends with Edgar Degas, who invited him to exhibit with Impressionist Exhibitions in 1880, which upset Claude Monet. Raffaëlli pursued his art independently thereafter.

31 March: in 1824, William Morris Hunt was born in Vermont. He trained under Jean-François Millet in Paris and with the Barbizon School, then became Boston’s leading portrait and landscape artist. He died in New Hampshire in 1879.

2 May: in 1924, Anna Sofia Palm de Rosa died. She was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1859, where she became popular for her watercolour landscapes and marine views. She abandoned Sweden at the end of 1895, spent a year in Paris, and spent the rest of her life in Italy, first on the island of Capri and then near Naples.

10 May: in 1824, the National Gallery in London first opened its doors to the public.

11 May: in 1824, Jean-Léon Gérôme was born in north-eastern France. He trained under Paul Delaroche in Paris and Italy. His breakthrough came at the Salon in 1847, and he came to specialise in realist works showing scenes from classics, including gladiatorial combat and the martyrdom of Christians. He married the daughter of an international art dealer, and he and his father-in-law enjoyed great commercial success. He taught extensively at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and was an outspoken opponent of Impressionism, but an early enthusiast for the new art of photography.

15 May: in 1924, Fritz Roeber died. Born in Elberfeld, Germany, in 1851, he was an illustrator and history painter who became a Director of the Düsseldorf Art Academy.

14 June: in 1924, Émile Claus died. He was born in a village in Belgium, and trained at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts. He progressed from realism to a distinctive variant of Impressionism known as Luminism.

8 July: in 1924, Paul Albert Steck died in Paris. He had been born in Troyes, France, and trained under Jean-Léon Gérôme in Paris. He painted landscapes and Symbolist figurative works.

10 July: in 1924, Þórarinn B. Þorláksson died. A landscape painter, he had been born in 1867, and became the first Icelander to exhibit paintings in his home country.

12 July: in 1824, Eugène Louis Boudin was born in Honfleur, France. He became friends with Constant Troyon, Jean-François Millet and other French painters, and trained in Paris under Eugène Isabey. In 1857 or 1858, he became friends with the young Claude Monet, and was then his mentor during Monet’s formative years. His plein air views of the beaches of the Channel coast were the foundation for Impressionism. He died in Deauville in 1896.

12 July: in 1924, Henrietta Mary Ada Ward died. She was born into an artistic family in 1832, studied at art schools in London, then painted history and genre scenes, exhibiting at the Royal Academy. She taught art to several of Queen Victoria’s children, and was friends with Charles Dickens and others, but her paintings have become largely forgotten since.

15 July: in 1924, Viscount Kuroda Seiki (黒田 清輝) died in Tokyo, Japan. He was born in 1866, and accompanied his brother-in-law to Paris in 1884, where he abandoned law studies to learn to paint under Raphaël Collin and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. He returned to Japan in 1893, where he became one of the leaders in the adoption of Western-style painting, and a leading teacher.

27 July: in 1924, Muggur, originally Guðmundur Pétursson Thorsteinsson, died in Denmark. He was born in Iceland in 1891 to an affluent family, and studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, although his best-known paintings are Icelandic landscapes.

25 August: in 1724, George Stubbs was born in Liverpool, England. He was largely self-taught, and soon came to specialise in painting portraits of racing horses for their rich owners. He was one of the first animal-painters to study anatomy in detail, and in 1772 painted an early depiction of a kangaroo. He died in London in 1806.

5 October: in 1524, Joachim Patinir died in Antwerp. He is thought to have been born in about 1480, and became a master of the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp in 1515. A friend of Albrecht Dürer, he was one of the major Flemish painters of the Northern Renaissance, and an enthusiast for ‘world views’.

12 October: in 1924, Antonio Muñoz Degrain died in Málaga, Spain. He was born in Valencia in 1840, where he started to train, although he was largely self-taught. His landscapes became progressively Impressionist, and he taught extensively.

7 November: in 1924, Hans Thoma died in Karlsruhe, Germany. He was born in the Black Forest, entering the Karlsruhe Academy, followed by Düsseldorf, Paris, and other places. He painted landscapes and narrative paintings based largely on idyllic country life.

10 November: in 1924, János Pentelei Molnár died in Hungary. He had been born in 1878, trained under Jean-Paul Laurens, and painted Hungarian landscapes.

9 December: in 1824, Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, or Girodet for short, died in Paris. Born in France in 1767, he studied under Jacques-Louis David and won the Prix de Rome. He was a highly successful and prolific portraitist, and painted narratives in neoclassical style.

14 December: in 1824, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes was born in Lyon, France. He trained in Paris under Eugène Delacroix and Thomas Couture, developing a distinctive symbolist style. He became a major influence in French painting as co-founder and president of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, which became the major salon at the end of the nineteenth century. He died in Paris in 1898.

15 December: in 1924, Henri-Jules-Jean Geoffroy died in Paris. Known under the name Géo as an illustrator, he was born in 1853, trained in Paris under Léon Bonnat, and specialised as a painter of children in Naturalist style.

28 December: in 1924, Léon Bakst died near Paris. He was born Leyb-Khaim Izrailevich Rosenberg in 1866, in Belarus. He studied at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts, and in the 1890s studied at the Académie Julian. He became a member of the circle of artists around Sergei Diaghilev, later working as a stage designer and scene-painter for the Ballets Russes.

30 December: in 1724, Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée was born in Paris. He trained with the French Royal Academy, then won the Prix de Rome in 1749. His paintings are classical narratives in Rococo style. In 1760 he was appointed principal court painter to the Empress of Russia, but he returned to Paris two years later to become a professor at the French Royal Academy, and died in Paris in 1805.

I hope that you will join me in celebrating the lives and works of these painters in the coming year, and wish you a happy and successful New Year.