1856 in art

Events

• March 19 – A settlement is approved in the Court of Chancery establishing the Turner Bequest to the nation
• May 1 – Charles Lutwidge Dodgson takes up photography as a hobby
• May 5 – The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1856 opens at the National Gallery in London
• August 25 – Dante Gabriel Rossetti first encounters Fanny Cornforth in a London pleasure garden; the following day he sketches her head in his studio for the figure of a prostitute in his unfinished painting Found
• December 2 – The National Portrait Gallery, London, is established
• December 8 – Édouard Manet opens his own studio
• Owen Jones publishes The Grammar of Ornament, illustrated in chromolithography

Awards

• Austrian Imperial Prize for Sculpture – Joseph Boehm

Works

• Ivan Aivazovsky – A Strong Wind
• William-Adolphe Bouguereau – La Danse ''''
• Ford Madox Brown – Take your Son, Sir!
• Philip Hermogenes Calderon – Broken Vows
• Théodore Chassériau
• * Moorish Woman Leaving the Bath
• * Susanna and the Elders
• Samuel Colman – Meadows and Wildflowers at Conway
• Édouard Dubufe – The Congress of Paris
• John Faed – Portrait of George Washington Taking the Salute at Trenton
• William Powell Frith – Many Happy Returns of the Day
• Hiroshige – One Hundred Famous Views of Edo
• Arthur Hughes – April Love
• William Holman Hunt – The Scapegoat
• Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
• * Madame Moitessier
• * La Source
• Jozef Israëls – Passing Mother's Grave
• Sir Edwin Landseer – Saved
• Baron Carlo Marochetti – Richard Coeur de Lion (statue)
• John Everett Millais
• * Autumn Leaves
• * The Blind Girl
• * Peace Concluded
• Jean-François Millet – Shepherdess Seated on a Rock
• Adeline Harris Sears - Quilt, Tumbling Blocks with Signatures pattern
• Eugene von Guerard – View of Geelong
• Henry Wallis – ''The Death of Chatterton''

Births

• January 7 – Charles Harold Davis, American landscape painter
• January 8 – Elizabeth Taylor, American painter
• January 12 – John Singer Sargent, Florentine-born American portrait painter
• February 29 - John Ward Dunsmore, American painter
• March 8 – Colin Campbell Cooper, American impressionist painter
• March 9 – Tom Roberts, Australian painter
• March 11 – Georges Petit, French art dealer
• May 20 – Henri-Edmond Cross, French neo-impressionist painter
• October 9 - F. W. Pomeroy, English sculptor
• October 28
• * Carolina Benedicks-Bruce, Swedish sculptor
• * Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, American portrait and genre painter
• November 6 – Jefferson David Chalfant, American trompe-l'œil painter
• November 11 - Alfred Drury, English sculptor
• November 18 – Joakim Skovgaard, Danish painter
• November 21 – Eveleen Tennant, English portrait photographer
• Undated – Harry Fidler, English equine painter

Deaths

• January 4 – David d'Angers, French sculptor and engraver
• April 5 – František Horčička, Czech history and portrait painter
• April 27 – Louis Joseph César Ducornet, French painter
• July 4 – István Ferenczy, Hungarian sculptor
• July 19 – Henry Aston Barker, Scottish landscape and panorama painter
• July 22 – Thomas Doughty, American landscape painter
• September 1 – Sir Richard Westmacott, English sculptor
• October – Rafael Tegeo, Spanish Neoclassical painter
• October 8 – Théodore Chassériau, French Romantic painter
• October 10 – Gim Jeong-hui, Korean calligrapher and artist
• October 25 – Naitō Toyomasa, Japanese sculptor of netsuke from Tanba Province
• October 28 – Johann Peter Krafft, German-Austrian painter
• November 4 – Hippolyte Delaroche, French painter
• November 6 – Cephas Thompson, American portrait painter
• November 13 – Ludwig Buchhorn, German painter and engraver
• November 21 – Charles de Steuben, French painter
• November 23 – Thomas Seddon, English landscape painter date unknown
• * Pieter Godfried Bertichen, Dutch painter and lithographer
• * Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Duchesne, French painter and miniaturist
• * Elisabeth Charlotta Karsten, Swedish and Russian painter
• * Frederick Nash, English painter and draughtsman