1846 in art

Events

• 4 May – The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1846 opens at the National Gallery in London
• Edward Lear publishes Illustrated Excursions to Italy and is made Drawing Master to Queen Victoria.
• The Wellington Statue by Matthew Cotes Wyatt is erected at its original location in London's Hyde Park Corner.

Works

• Ivan Aivazovsky – Battle of Navarino
• Thomas Cole – Catskill Landscape
• William Etty – Musidora: The Bather 'At the Doubtful Breeze Alarmed'
• Jean-Léon Gérôme – Young Greeks at a Cockfight
• Louis Hersent – Portrait of Delphine Gay
• Edward Hicks – Noah's Ark
• Emanuel Leutze – The Courtship of Anne Boleyn
• John Everett Millais – Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru
• Jean-François Millet – Prometheus Unbound
• Rembrandt Peale – Self-portrait
• Eliseo Sala – Pia de' Tolomei
• Henri Frédéric Schopin – The Divorce of the Empress Josephine
• Clarkson Stanfield
• * The Battle of Roveredo
• * On the Dogger Bank
• Giovanni Strazza – Ishmael Abandoned in the Desert.
• J.M.W. Turner
• * Queen Mab's Cave
• * Whalers Entangled in Flaw Ice
• Horace Vernet – Louis Philippe and His Sons
• Edward Matthew Ward – The Disgrace of Lord Clarendon
• George Frederic Watts – Paolo and Francesca
• Franz Xaver Winterhalter – ''Portrait of Edward, Prince of Wales''

Births

• March 17 – Kate Greenaway, English illustrator
• May 3 – Sir Edmund Elton, 8th Baronet, English studio potter
• May 21 – Luc-Olivier Merson, French painter
• October 14 – Albert Schickedanz, Austro-Hungarian architect and painter in the Eclectic style
• October 28 – Albert Dubois-Pillet, French Neo-impressionist painter
• November 3 – Elizabeth Thompson, British painter
• December 9 – John Macallan Swan, English painter and sculptor

Deaths

• January 22 – Louis-Pierre Baltard, French architect and engraver
• April 16 – Christian Duttenhofer, German engraver
• June 8 – Rodolphe Töpffer, Swiss painter and cartoonist
• June 22 – Benjamin Haydon, English historical painter and writer
• July 16 – Vasily Demut-Malinovsky, Russian sculptor in the Empire style
• August 11 – Bartolomé Montalvo, Spanish painter specializing in landscapes, hunted animals and still lifes
• August 12 – John Caspar Wild, Swiss-born American landscape painter and lithographer
• October 5 – Henri van der Haert, Belgian portrait painter, sculptor, illustrator and engraver
• December 12 – Charles Alexandre Lesueur, French artist and explorer
• date unknown – Pál Balkay, Hungarian painter and teacher