1868 in art

Events

• 4 May – Royal Academy Exhibition of 1868 opens in London. It is the last to be held at the National Gallery before a move to Burlington House
• Rodolphe Julian establishes the Académie Julian in Paris.
• Deutsches Gewerbe-Museum zu Berlin established.
• English merchant Francis Cook, 1st Viscount of Monserrate, begins to add paintings to his art collection at Doughty House, Richmond, London.
• Due to debt and eviction, Claude Monet attempts suicide by throwing himself into the Seine river.

Works

• Lawrence Alma-Tadema
• * Phidias Showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to his Friends
• * A Roman Flower Market
• Edward Armitage – Herod's Birthday Feast
• Frédéric Bazille
• * Self-portrait
• * View of the Village
• Albert Bierstadt
• * '
• * '
• * Tyrolean Landscape
• * Yosemite Valley, Yosemite Park
• Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux – Why Born Enslaved! or Why Born a Slave? – French Pourquoi! Naitre esclave? or La Negresse
• Léon-Alexandre Delhomme – Democritus meditating on the seat of the soul
• Lowes Cato Dickinson –
• Lot Flannery – Abraham Lincoln
• Jean-Léon Gérôme – The Execution of Marshal Ney
• George P. A. Healy – The Peacemakers
• Holman Hunt – Isabella and the Pot of Basil
• Charles-Auguste Lebourg – The Child and the Grasshopper
• Édouard Manet
• * The Balcony
• * Luncheon in the Studio
• * Mme. Manet at the Piano
• * Portrait d’Émile Zola
• * Portrait of Théodore Duret
• John Everett Millais – Vanessa
• Claude Monet – On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt
• Albert Joseph Moore
• * Azaleas
• * A Greek Play
• Elisabet Ney – King Ludwig II of Bavaria
• Vasily Perov – At the Railroad
• Val Prinsep – A Venetian Lover
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• * In the Summer (The Bohemian girl)
• * The Boy with the Cat
• * Skaters in the Bois de Boulogne
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti
• * The Blue Silk Dress
• * Lady Lilith
• * Pia de' Tolomei
• Frederick Sandys – Medea
• James Tissot – Le Balcon du Cercle de la rue Royale
• Frederick Walker – ''The Vagrants''

Births

• April 6 – Helen Hyde, American etcher and engraver
• April 12 – Ella Gaunt Smith, American doll-maker
• April 21 – Alfred Henry Maurer, American modernist painter
• April 28 – Émile Bernard, French Post-Impressionist painter
• June 5 – Johan Thorn Prikker, Dutch art nouveau painter and stained-glass artist
• June 18 – Georges Lacombe, French sculptor and painter
• July 16 – Willy Gretor, born Vilhelm Petersen, Danish-born painter and art dealer
• October 8
• * Fidus, German graphic designer
• * Max Slevogt, German artist
• November 11 – Édouard Vuillard, French painter
• November 23 – Mary Brewster Hazelton, American portrait painter

Deaths

• January 15 – Lucie Ingemann, Danish religious painter
• January 28 – Adalbert Stifter, Austrian writer, poet, painter, and pedagogue
• February 14 – Emil Bærentzen, Danish portrait painter and lithographer
• February 21 – Giuseppe Abbati, Italian painter
• February 26 – Georg Heinrich Busse, German landscape painter and engraver
• March – John Burnet, Scottish engraver and painter
• March 10 – Herman Wilhelm Bissen, Danish sculptor
• March 29 – Felix Slade, English lawyer, art collector and founder of the Slade School of Art
• May 2 – James Wilson Carmichael, English marine painter
• May 24 – Emanuel Leutze, German American painter
• August 10
• * George Cattermole, English illustrator and watercolourist
• * Adah Isaacs Menken, American actress, painter and poet
• September 13 – Richard Rothwell, Irish portrait and genre painter
• September 13 – Angélique Mezzara, French portrait painter and miniaturist
• September 27 – August Piepenhagen, German painter active in Bohemia
• October 10 – François-Édouard Picot, French historic painter
• November 23
• * Claude Victor de Boissieu, French artist and local politician
• * Charles Méryon, French etcher
• December 1 – John Edward Carew, Irish sculptor date unknown
• * Johann Baptist Dallinger von Dalling, Austrian painter
• * Louis Royer, Austrian Netherlands sculptor