1908 in art

Events

• January 20 – Hugh Lane opens the Dublin City Gallery, the world's first to display only modern art.
• February – The Ashcan School give their first and only exhibition, opening at the Macbeth Gallery in New York.
• March 20–May 2 – Salon des Indépendants in Paris gives rise to the term "Cubism".
• May – Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky produces a color photographic portrait of Leo Tolstoy.
• July – Allied Artists' Association holds its first exhibition, at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
• July 29 – The Whitworth Art Gallery building in Manchester is formally opened.
• Autumn – Edvard Munch suffers a nervous breakdown and enters a clinic in Copenhagen.
• November – Georges Braque exhibits at Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler's Paris gallery; critic Louis Vauxcelles describes him as "reducing everything... to geometric schemas, to cubes."
• Paul Ranson founds the Académie Ranson in Paris.
• The British Medical Association Building, London, designed by Charles Holden with eighteen controversial nude sculptures by Jacob Epstein, is completed.
• Wassily Kandinsky settles in the Bavarian town of Murnau am Staffelsee and begins a series of paintings inspired by the local landscape.
• The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna rejects Adolf Hitler's application to study painting.
• Australian painter Arthur Streeton marries violinist Nora Clench.

Works

• George Bellows – Steaming Streets
• László Beszédes – Joseph
• Giovanni Boldini - Marchesa Luisa Casati, with a greyhound
• Pierre Bonnard – Woman in a Blue Hat
• Constantin Brâncuși
• * The Kiss
• * The Wisdom of the Earth
• Georges Braque
• * Houses at l'Estaque
• * Le Viaduc de L'Estaque
• Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis
• * Fantasy
• * Prelude and Fugue
• * Sonatas
• ** Sonata of the Pyramids
• ** Sonata of the Sea
• ** Sonata of the Serpent
• ** Sonata of the Summer
• ** Sonata of the Stars
• Henri-Edmond Cross – Cypresses at Cagnes
• Cyrus Edwin Dallin – Appeal to the Great Spirit
• Roger de La Fresnaye - Allée des Acacias in the Bois de Boulogne
• André Derain – Landscape in Provence
• Herbert James Draper – The Water Nymph
• John Duncan – Helene Schlapp – Iona
• Thomas Eakins – William Rush and His Model
• Daniel Chester French – Statue of George Frisbie Hoar
• Florence Fuller – Portrait of Deborah Vernon Hackett
• J. W. Godward
• * A Classical Lady
• * A Grecian Girl
• * Ismenia
• Erich Heckel – Weisses Haus in Dangast
• Lewis Hine – Girl Worker in a Carolina Cotton Mill
• Edward Robert Hughes – Midsummer Eve
• Ernst Ludwig Kirchner –
• Gustav Klimt –
• * The Kiss
• * Schloss by the Water
• Laura Knight – The Beach
• Carl Larsson – Gustav Vasas intåg i Stockholm 1523
• Henri Matisse
• * Bathers with a Turtle
• * The Dessert: Harmony in Red
• * Game of Bowls
• * Portrait of Greta Moll
• Amedeo Modigliani – The Jewess
• Piet Mondrian – Avond
• Claude Monet – paintings of Venice
• * The Doge's Palace Seen from San Giorgio Maggiore
• * Le Grand Canal
• * Le Grand Canal et Santa Maria della Salute
• * Le Palais Ducal
• * Palace From Molo, Venice
• * San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk
• Mikhail Nesterov – Portrait of B. M. Nesterov
• William Ordway Partridge – Statue of Alexander Hamilton
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir – Portrait of Ambroise Vollard
• John Singer Sargent – Portrait of Arthur Balfour
• Otto Schumann – Lewis and Clark Memorial Column
• Carl Seffner – Statue of Johann Sebastian Bach
• Walter Sickert – The Camden Town Murder
• Marianne Stokes – Madonna and Child
• Pedro Subercaseaux
• * Cabildo abierto del 22 de mayo de 1810
• * Mariano Moreno en su mesa de trabajo
• Sydney Curnow Vosper – Salem
• J. W. Waterhouse – ''Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May''

Births

January to June

• January 18 – Humberto Rosa, painter
• February 12 – Jean Effel, French painter, caricaturist, illustrator and journalist
• February 26 – Tex Avery, American animator, cartoonist, and director.
• February 28 – William Coldstream, English realist painter.
• February 29 – Balthus, French modern artist
• March 13
• * Rita Angus, New Zealand painter
• * Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Portuguese-French abstract painter
• March 19 – George Rodger, English photographer
• March 23 – Cecil Collins, English painter and printmaker
• May 9 – Mary Scheier, American sculptor and academic
• May 16 – Anne Bonnet, Belgian painter
• June 24 – Helen Lundeberg, painter

July to December

• July 6 – Sam Vanni, Finnish painter
• July 8 – Kaii Higashiyama, Japanese painter and writer
• July 9 – Minor White, American photographer.
• July 22 – Claire Falkenstein, American sculptor and painter.
• August 22 – Henri Cartier-Bresson, French photographer.
• August 28
• * Edith Tudor Hart, born Edith Suschitzky, Austrian-born photojournalist and communist agent in Britain.
• * Roger Tory Peterson, American naturalist, ornithologist, artist and educator.
• August 30 – Leonor Fini, Argentine-born surrealist painter.
• September 6 – Korczak Ziolkowski, Polish American sculptor.
• September 14 – Peter Watson, English arts benefactor
• October 1 – Nicholas Marsicano, American painter.
• October 21 – Jorge Oteiza, Spanish sculptor, painter, designer and writer.
• October 27 – Lee Krasner, American abstract expressionist painter.
• November 4 – EQ Nicholson, born Elsie Q. Myers, English textile designer and painter.
• November 19 – Gisèle Freund, born Gisela Freund, German-born photographer.
• December 3 – Victor Pasmore, English artist and architect.
• December 23 – Yousuf Karsh, Armenian-Canadian photographer.

Full date unknown

• Madiha Omar, Iraqi artist
• Myron Stout, American abstract painter
• Umaña, Colombian artist.

Deaths

• January 9 – Wilhelm Busch, German humorist, poet, illustrator and painter
• January 13 – Hashimoto Gahō, Japanese painter of the Kanō school
• January 19 – Roberto Bompiani, Italian painter and sculptor
• January 28 – Sidney Paget, British illustrator
• April 13 – Aasta Hansteen, Norwegian painter, writer, and early feminist
• June 1 – Allen Butler Talcott, American painter
• July 17 - Joseph Henderson, Scottish landscape painter
• August 30 – Giovanni Fattori, Italian painter and printmaker
• November 3 – Harro Magnussen, German sculptor
• November 4 – Richard Gerstl, Austrian painter and draughtsman
• November 24 – Charles Henry Turner, American watercolourist and oil painter
• December 5 – Ernest Hébert, French painter
• December 27 – František Bohumír Zvěřina, Czech painter date unknown
• * Leopoldo Costoli, Italian sculptor
• * George Earl, British painter of sporting animals