1844 in art

Events

• The Gypsotheca Canoviana at the Museo Canova in Possagno is completed.
• June – Henry Fox Talbot begins publication of The Pencil of Nature, the first book illustrated with photographs from a camera to be commercially published.
• July 31 – Opening of the Wadsworth Atheneum, which is today the oldest art museum in the United States.

Works

• József Borsos – Portrait of Kristóf Hegedűs
• William Collins – Seaford, Sussex
• Charles West Cope – Palpitation
• Gustave Courbet
• * Portrait of Juliette Courbet
• * The Hammock
• Thomas Couture – The Love of Gold
• Thomas Creswick – Scene on the Tummel, Perthshire
• Honoré Daumier – Les bas bleus
• Eugène Delacroix – Last Words of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius
• Théodore de Gudin – La Salle's Expedition to Louisiana in 1684
• Joseph Patrick Haverty – Patrick O'Brien: The Limerick Piper
• Edwin Landseer – Shoeing
• Carlo Marochetti – Wellington Statue, Glasgow
• Eleuterio Pagliano – İl pepe e il peperoncino
• Dominique Papety – The Temptation of Saint Hilarion
• John Partridge – Portrait of Lord Melbourne
• Henri Félix Emmanuel Philippoteaux – The Battle of Rivoli
• Richard Redgrave
• * The Governess
• * The Sempstress
• Hiram Powers – The Greek Slave
• Frederick Richard Say – Portrait of the Earl of Derby
• Clarkson Stanfield – The Morning after the Wreck
• J. M. W. Turner
• * Approach to Venice
• * Ostend
• * Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway
• * Venice, Maria della Salute
• * Venice Quay, Ducal Palace
• Peter von Hess – Crossing the Berezina River
• William Lindsay Windus - ''The Black Boy''

Births

• February 20 – Mihály Munkácsy, Hungarian painter
• February 26 – Annie Swynnerton, English painter
• April – Edmund Elisha Case, American painter
• April 14 – Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat, French ceramicist
• May 21 – Henri Rousseau, "Le Douanier Rousseau", French modernist primitive painter
• May 22 – Mary Cassatt, American Impressionist painter
• July 25
• * Thomas Eakins, American painter, photographer and sculptor
• * Amanda Sidwall, Swedish painter
• July 31 – Léon Augustin Lhermitte, French genre painter
• August 5 – Ilya Repin, Russian painter and sculptor
• September 20 – William H. Illingworth, American photographer
• October 22 – Lady Margaret Forrest, French-born Australian patron of the arts
• October 25 – Viktor Oskar Tilgner, Austrian sculptor
• October 28 – Moses Jacob Ezekiel, American sculptor date unknown – Susan Isabel Dacre, English painter

Deaths

• February 21 – Jacques-Edme Dumont, French sculptor
• March 6 – Francis Nicholson, English landscape painter
• March 24 – Bertel Thorvaldsen, Danish sculptor
• May 2 – William Beckford, English novelist, patron art critic
• May 5 – Andrew Geddes, British painter
• May 14 – Robert Hills, English painter and etcher
• July 23 – Christian Gobrecht, American engraver
• August 6 – Samuel Drummond, British painter especially portraits and marine genre works
• August 28 – Giuseppe Bernardino Bison, Italian painter, especially of history pieces, genre depictions, and whimsical and imaginary landscapes
• October 14
• *Adélaïde Victoire Hall, French painter
• *Jan Baptiste de Jonghe, Belgian landscape painter
• November 2 – Sir Augustus Wall Callcott, English landscape painter
• November 18 – Antonín Machek, Czech painter date unknown
• * Arnoldus Bloemers, Dutch painter of flowers, fruit, and animals
• * Giovacchino Cantini, Italian engraver
• * Frédéric Théodore Faber, Belgian landscape and genre painter
• * Qian Du, Chinese landscape painter during the Qing dynasty
• * Alexander Johann Dallinger von Dalling, Austrian painter