1903 in art

Events

• June 3 – Laura Johnson marries Harold Knight.
• Isadora Duncan develops free dance, a dance technique influenced by the ancient Greeks and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.
• With the support of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jacques Villon, Auguste Rodin and others, the first Salon d'Automne opens in Paris as a reaction to the conservatism of the Paris Salon.
• Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann found the Wiener Werkstätte in Vienna.
• Frederic Dorr Steele produces his first illustrations for Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories in the United States, for Collier's Weekly.
• Bernard Berenson publishes The Drawings of the Florentine Painters.
• Anna Muthesius publishes Das Eigenkleid der Frau.

Works

• Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema – Silver Favourites
• Cassius Marcellus Coolidge – 16 paintings in Dogs Playing Poker series
• Pompeo Coppini – Confederate Soldiers monument, Texas State Capitol
• Evelyn De Morgan – The Love Potion
• Frederick H. Evans – A Sea of Steps
• Gebhard Fugel and assistants – Panorama of the Crucifixion of Christ
• Jean-Léon Gérôme – Metallurgical Worker and Metallurgical Science
• J. W. Godward
• * Amaryllis
• * The Old, Old Story
• * The Rendezvous
• * Summer Flowers
• Wassily Kandinsky – The Blue Rider
• Paul Klee – Inventionen series of etchings, including Jungfrau im Baum and Zwei Männer, einander in höherer Stellung vermutend, begegnen sich
• Peder Severin Krøyer – Sankthansbål på Skagen strand
• Henry Herbert La Thangue – Mowing Bracken
• Margaret MacDonald – Opera Of The Winds
• Jacek Malczewski
• * Polish Hamlet. Portrait of Aleksander Wielopolski
• * Triptych: Law, Motherland, Art
• Paula Modersohn-Becker – The Old Farmer
• Edvard Munch
• * The Brooch, Eva Mudocci
• * Dr. Linde's Sons
• * Four Girls in Åsgårdstrand
• * Self-Portrait in Hell
• * Village in Moonlight
• Elisabet Ney – Statue of Albert Sidney Johnston (Texas State Cemetery)
• Pablo Picasso – paintings from artist's Blue Period
• *Portrait of Angel Fernández de Soto
• *Tête de femme
• *The Tragedy
• *La vie
• *Vieux guitariste aveugle
• Camille Pissarro – Self-portrait
• Sir Edward Poynter – The Cave of the Storm Nymphs
• Tom Roberts – The Big Picture
• Augustus Saint-Gaudens – Henry W. Maxwell Memorial
• John Singer Sargent – Mrs. Fiske Warren (Gretchen Osgood) and Her Daughter Rachel
• Hugo Simberg – The Wounded Angel
• Max Slevogt – The Singer Francisco D'Andrade as Don Giovanni in Mozart's Opera
• August Strindberg – Staden
• Abbott Handerson Thayer – Stevenson Memorial
• Félix Vallotton – The Five Painters
• J. W. Waterhouse
• * Boreas
• * ''Echo and Narcissus''

Births

January to June

• January – Guan Zilan, Chinese avant-garde painter
• January 10 – Barbara Hepworth, English sculptor and artist
• January 19 – Sir Alfred Beit, 2nd Baronet, British politician, art collector and philanthropist and honorary Irish citizen
• March 7 – Maud Lewis, Canadian folk artist
• March 10 – Edward Bawden, English artist and illustrator
• March 14
• * Richard Eurich, English sea- and landscape painter
• * Adolph Gottlieb, American abstract expressionist painter and sculptor
• April 3 – Lola Álvarez Bravo, Mexican photographer
• April 16 – Thomas Hennell, English painter
• May 7 – Paul Ninas, American painter
• June 6 – Ceri Richards, Welsh painter
• June 15 – Victor Brauner, Romanian painter
• June 21 – Al Hirschfeld, American caricaturist

July to December

• July 13 – Kenneth Clark, English author, museum director, broadcaster and art historian
• July 16 – Tore Asplund, Swedish-born American painter
• July 21 – Roy Neuberger, American art collector and patron
• July 22 – Eric Ravilious, English artist
• August 14 – Lodewijk Bruckman, Dutch magic realist painter
• August 24 – Graham Sutherland, English artist
• September 16 – Karl Zerbe, German-born painter
• September 20 – Gertrud Arndt, German photographer
• September 25 – Mark Rothko, Latvian-born American painter and printmaker
• September 29 – Walter Inglis Anderson, American painter
• October 15 – Otto Bettmann, German-born image archivist
• October 22 – Zlatyu Boyadzhiev, Bulgarian painter
• October 24 – Charlotte Perriand, French architect and designer
• October 25 – Harry Shoulberg, American expressionist painter]
• November 3 – Walker Evans, American photographer
• December 13 – John Piper, English painter
• December 24 – Joseph Cornell, American artist and sculptor
• December 30 – Candido Portinari, Brazilian painter date unknown – Bernard Lamotte, French illustrator, painter and muralist

Deaths

• January 5 – Eleuterio Pagliano, Italian painter
• January 24 – Charles Wynne Nicholls, genre painter
• March 10 – Sophie Gengembre Anderson, genre painter
• April 24 – Walter Osborne, Irish impressionist painter
• May 9 – Paul Gauguin, painter
• June 8 – Robert Frederick Blum, American illustrator and lithographer
• July 14 – James McNeill Whistler, American painter and etcher
• August 17 – Hans Gude, painter
• September 13 – Carl Schuch, painter
• October 18 – John Callcott Horsley, painter
• October 26 – János Fadrusz, Hungarian sculptor
• November 12 or 13 – Camille Pissarro, Impressionist painter