1896 in art

Events

• January 24 – Painter Sir Frederic Leighton is created 1st Baron Leighton in the peerage of the United Kingdom one day before his death in London of angina pectoris.
• February – Edvard Munch moves to Paris and concentrates on printmaking.
• December – Walter Crane publishes .
• A bout of typhoid fever puts an end to Maurice de Vlaminck's career as a cyclist.
• William Merritt Chase founds Parsons The New School for Design as the Chase School of Art in Greenwich Village, New York.
• At Giverny Claude Monet begins painting his Mornings on the Seine series, which will continue through 1897.
• Art student Henri Matisse visits Australian painter John Russell on the island of Belle Île off the coast of Brittany and is introduced to Impressionism and to the work of Vincent van Gogh.
• Interior design gallery Maison de l'Art Nouveau opens in Paris.
• Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest, designed by Ödön Lechner, is completed.
• Max Beerbohm publishes Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen in London, his first collection of drawings.
• Bernard Berenson publishes Florentine Painters of the Renaissance.
• The Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Gravers is founded.
• Hubert von Herkomer is made a knight in the United Kingdom.

Works

• Nels N. Alling – Statue of George Washington
• Michael Ancher – A stroll on the beach
• Harry Bates – equestrian statue of Lord Roberts
• Aubrey Beardsley – Illustrations to Pope's The Rape of the Lock
• William-Adolphe Bouguereau – The Wave
• Alfred Boucher – Volubilis
• Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris – The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, now newly imprinted
• Lovis Corinth – Self-portrait with skeleton
• Edgar Degas – Bathers
• Paul Dubois – Baptism of Clovis
• Thomas Eakins – The Pianist
• Julian Fałat – Self-portrait with palette
• Luke Fildes – Frederick Treves
• Paul Gauguin
• * '
• * Te tamari no atua
• * Self-portrait "près du Golgotha"
• * Self-portrait for my friend Daniel
• * Oyez Hui Iesu
• J. W. Godward
• * Campaspe
• * He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not
• Akseli Gallen-Kallela – The Defense of the Sampo
• Niels Hansen Jacobsen – Trold, der vejrer kristenblod
• Paja Jovanović – Migration of the Serbs
• Fernand Khnopff
• * Caress of the Sphinx
• * Posthumous portrait of Marguerite Landuyt
• Maximilien Luce
• * Le bon samaritain
• * Scène de rue à Paris
• Juan Luna – Ecce Homo
• Frederick McCubbin – On the wallaby track
• Charles Rennie Mackintosh – Stencilled friezes for Catherine Cranston's Buchanan Street tearooms, Glasgow
• Konstantin Makovsky – Appeal of Kuzma Minin
• Arturo Michelena – Miranda en la Carraca
• Mihály Munkácsy – Ecce homo
• Pablo Picasso – '
• Camille Pissarro – Pont Boieldieu in Rouen, Rainy Weather
• J. Massey Rhind – Erskine Memorial Fountain
• Félicien Rops – Pornocrates
• Giovanni Segantini – Love at the Fountain of Life
• François-Léon Sicard – Le Bon Samaritain
• Hugo Simberg – The Garden of Death
• Arthur Streeton – The purple noon’s transparent might
• Viktor Vasnetsov
• * Sirin and Alkonost – Birds of Joy and Sorrow
• * The Temptation
• J. W. Waterhouse
• * Hylas and the Nymphs
• * Pandora
• James McNeill Whistler
• * Savoy Pigeons
• * The Thames
• * Waterloo Bridge from the Savoy
• *
• Anders Zorn – ''Self-portrait with model''

Births

• January 4 – André Masson, French artist
• January 20 – Charles E. Brown, English aviation photographer
• January 22 – Sava Šumanović, Serbian painter
• April 14 – Alfredo Volpi, Brazilian Modernist painter
• July 2
• * Quirino Cristiani, Argentine animation director and cartoonist
• * Prudence Heward, Canadian painter
• July 13 – Mordecai Ardon, Israeli painter
• August 4 – José Fioravanti, Argentine monumental sculptor
• August 14 – Eric Grate, Swedish sculptor, painter and graphics artist
• August 15 – Paul Outerbridge, photographer
• September 24 – Camilo Mori, Chilean painter
• November 8 – Erika Abels d'Albert, Austrian artist
• November 13 – Ernst Thoms, German painter
• December 25 – Marion Dorn, American-born textile designer
• December 31 – Cathleen Mann, English portrait painter and costume designer
• Cicely Hey, English artist and model

Deaths

• January 4 – Henri Alfred Jacquemart, French sculptor and animalier
• January 15 – Mathew Brady, American photographer
• January 25 – Frederic Leighton, English painter and sculptor specialising in classical subjects
• February 5 – Jean-Auguste Barre, French sculptor
• February – John Cooke Bourne, English topographical artist, lithographer and photographer
• April 16 – Viktor Oskar Tilgner, Austrian sculptor
• May 3 – Alfred William Hunt, English painter
• May 5 – Jacob Fjelde, Norwegian American sculptor
• May 15 – Évariste Vital Luminais, French historical painter
• July 7 – Erdmann Encke, German sculptor
• August 13 – Sir John Everett Millais, English pre-Raphaelite painter
• August 14 – Olin Levi Warner, American sculptor
• September 23 – Emmanuel Benner, French painter
• November 9 – Napoleon Sarony, Canadian American portrait photographer