1746 in art

Events

• The Venetian painter Canaletto moves to London, beginning a nine-year stay in England to be closer to his market.
• The French philosopher Charles Batteux publishes Les beaux-arts réduits à un même principe in Paris, putting forward for the first time the idea of les beaux arts, the fine arts.

Paintings

• Canaletto
• *A Most Beautiful View of the City of London Taken Through One of the Centres of the Arches of the New Bridge at Westminster
• *Westminster Bridge, with the Lord Mayor's Procession on the Thames
• Thomas Gainsborough – Conversation in a Park
• Elias Gottlob Haussmann – Johann Sebastian Bach
• Thomas Hudson –
• John Smybert – Sir William Pepperrell, Bt
• Giovanni Battista Tiepolo - St. Catherine of Siena

Births

• March 9 – François-Nicolas Delaistre, French sculptor
• March 22 – Gerard van Spaendonck, Dutch painter
• March 30 – Francisco Goya, Aragonese Spanish painter and printmaker
• June 6 – Francesco Saverio Mergalo, Italian portrait painter of the Rococo or late-Baroque period
• October 22 – James Northcote, English painter
• November 11 – Jean Guillaume Moitte, French sculptor
• December 30 – François-André Vincent, French painter date unknown
• * Luis Paret y Alcázar, Spanish painter of the late-Baroque or Rococo period
• * Anthonie Andriessen, Dutch landscape painter
• * William Ashford, British painter who worked exclusively in Ireland
• * Domenico Aspari, Italian painter and engraver
• * Etienne Aubry, French painter of primarily portraits and genre subjects
• * Ramón Bayeu, Spanish Neoclassicist painter
• * John Bogle, Scottish miniature painter
• * Joseph Boze, French portrait and miniature painter
• * Teodor Ilić Češljar, one of the best late Baroque and Rococo Serbian painters from the region of Vojvodina
• * Balthasar Anton Dunker, German landscape painter and etcher
• * Mauritius Lowe, British painter and engraver
• * Xi Gang, renowned Chinese calligrapher and painter in Qing Dynasty
• * Philippe-Laurent Roland, French sculptor
• * Michael Angelo Rooker, English oil and watercolour painter, illustrator and engraver
• * Henry Walton, British painter and art dealer

Deaths

• February 22 – Guillaume Coustou the Elder, French sculptor and academician
• March 20 – Nicolas de Largillière, French painter
• March 29 – Matteo Ripa, painter, engraver and missionary
• June 8 – Giacomo Leoni, architect
• July 30 – Francesco Trevisani, Italian painter of frescoes
• December 31 – Antonio Baroni, Italian painter active in Verona
• date unknown
• *Domenico Bocciardo, Italian painter, active in Genoa
• *Jan Baptist Bosschaert, Flemish painter
• *Sebastiano Galeotti, peripatetic Italian painter
• *Francesco Antonio Xaverio Grue, Italian potter and painter
• *Theodor van Pee, Dutch painter