1808 in art

Events

• May 2 and May 3 – In Spain the guerrilla resistance movement against the French forces of Napoleon Bonaparte begins; immortalized in 1814 by Francisco Goya's Third of May 1808.
• May 2 – The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1808 opens at Somerset House in London
• April 5 – John James Audubon marries Lucy Bakewell.
• October 15 – The Salon of 1808 opens at the Louvre in Paris
• The Academy of [Fine Arts, Munich], is given the title of Royal Academy of Fine Arts by King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria.
• The Rijksmuseum moves from The Hague to Amsterdam, where it is located temporarily at the Royal Palace.
• Thomas Phillips is elected to the Royal Academy.

Works

• Louis-Léopold Boilly – Departure of the Conscripts
• Antonio Canova – Venus Victrix
• Richard Cosway – Portrait miniature of Arthur Wellesley
• François-Xavier Fabre – The Judgement of Paris
• François Gérard
• * Portrait of Joseph Bonaparte
• * Portrait of Talleyrand
• James Gillray – The Spanish Bullfight
• Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson
• * The Burial of Atala
• * Napoleon Receiving the Keys of Vienna
• * François-René de Chateaubriand
• * Hortense de Beauharnais
• Antoine-Jean Gros
• * General Lasalle at the Siege of Stettin
• * Napoléon on the Battlefield of Eylau
• Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
• * The Valpinçon Bather
• * Oedipus and the Sphinx
• Thomas Lawrence – Portrait of the Children of Ayscoghe Boucherett
• Thomas Phillips – Venus and Adonis
• Adolphe Roehn – The Meeting of Napoleon I and Tsar Alexander I at Tilsit
• J. M. W. Turner
• * Margate
• * Pope's Villa at Twickenham
• * The Forest of Bere
• * Sheerness as Seen from the Nore
• * The Unpaid Bill
• * ''View of Richmond Hill and Bridge''

Publications

• Johann Dominicus Fiorillo – Geschichte der zeichnenden Künste.
• Robert Blair – The Grave, with illustrations from designs by William Blake.
• Augustus Charles Pugin & Thomas Rowlandson – Volume 1 of The Microcosm of London, illustrated in aquatint from watercolours produced jointly by Pugin & Rowlandson and published by Rudolph Ackermann in London.

Births

• February 5 – Carl Spitzweg, German Biedermeier painter
• February 26 – Honoré Daumier, French painter, sculptor and illustrator
• March 6 – Sofia Adlersparre, Swedish painter
• July 12 – Edward Troye, Swiss-born American equine painter
• December 14 – Édouard De Bièfve, Belgian painter
• Date unknown – Nikola Aleksić, Serbian portraitist in the Biedermeier artistic tradition and the Nazarene movement of 19th century German painters

Deaths

• February 10 – Hugh Douglas Hamilton, Irish portrait artist
• March 1 – Fredrika Eleonora von Düben, Swedish textile artist, member of the Swedish Academy of Arts">Sweden">Swedish Academy of Arts
• March 3 – Anton von Maron, Austrian painter active in Rome
• April 10 – Jean-Laurent Mosnier, French painter and miniaturist
• April 15 – Hubert Robert, French painter
• April 26 – Jean-Baptiste Pillement, French Rococo painter, designer and engraver
• June 1 – Jacques Kuyper, Dutch printmaker, painter, draftsman, watercolourist, etcher, musician, and composer
• June 6 – Magdalene Bärens, Danish still life and flower painter
• December 4 – Karl Ludwig Fernow, German art critic
• December 18 – Christina Chalon, Dutch painter and etcher
• December 22 – Samuel Shelley, English miniaturist and watercolour painter