1908 in art
Events from the year 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