1766 in art

Events from the year 1766 in art.

Events

 * July 19 – A baronetcy is created for British sculptor Henry Cheere.
 * England's oldest surviving Georgian theatre is constructed in Stockton-on-Tees.
 * The Drottningholm Palace Theatre is reopened as an opera house in Stockholm, Sweden, in its surviving form, designed by Carl Fredrik Adelcrantz.
 * Denis Diderot's Essais sur la peinture is published.

Works

 * Thomas Gainsborough – Portrait of David Garrick with a bust of Shakespeare (probably originally painted; lost)
 * Jean-Antoine Houdon – Bruno of Cologne (sculpture for Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri in Rome)
 * Maruyama Ōkyo – Crows
 * Allan Ramsay – Portrait of David Hume
 * Joseph Wright of Derby – A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery

Births

 * March 1 – Johann Conrad Felsing, German topographer and engraver using stippling (died 1819)
 * March 2 – Thomas Henry, French painter and art patron (died 1836)
 * March 16 – Jean-Frédéric Waldeck, artist and explorer (died 1875)
 * April 1 – François-Xavier Fabre, French painter of historical subjects (died 1837)
 * April 6 – Wilhelm von Kobell, German painter, printmaker and teacher (died 1853)
 * September 16 – Jes Bundsen, Danish architectural and landscape painter and etcher (died 1829)
 * October 14 – Friedrich Carl Gröger, north-German portrait painter and lithographer (died 1838)
 * December 22 – Johann Samuel Arnhold, German painter in oil and water-colours, and on porcelain and enamel (died 1827)
 * December 25 – Samuel Drummond, British painter especially portraits and marine genre works (died 1844)
 * date unknown
 * Pierre-Charles Bridan, French sculptor (died 1836)
 * Mariano Gerada, sculptor and woodworker (died 1823)

Deaths

 * January 7 – Giacomo Boni, Italian painter (born 1688)
 * January 19 – Giovanni Niccolò Servandoni, French architect and painter (born 1695)
 * March 4 – Joseph Aved, also called le Camelot (The Hawker) and Avet le Batave (The Dutch Avet), French Rococo portraitist (born 1702)
 * May 5 – Olof Arenius, Swedish portrait painter (born 1701)
 * June 22 – Carlo Zimech, Maltese priest and painter (born 1696)
 * July 17 – Giuseppe Castiglione, Italian Jesuit Brother, missionary in China, painter at the court of the Emperor (b. 1688)
 * July 18 – Mauro Antonio Tesi, Italian painter of the late-Baroque period, active mainly in Bologna (b. 1730)
 * August 13 – Margaret Fownes-Luttrell, English heiress and painter (b. 1726)
 * November 7
 * Vincenzo Meucci, Italian painter whose patrons included Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici (b. 1694)
 * Jean-Marc Nattier, French painter (b. 1685)
 * date unknown
 * Antonio Consetti, Italian historical painter (b. 1686)
 * William Elliott, English engraver (born 1727)