1856 in art

Events from the year 1856 in art.

Events

 * May 1 – Charles Lutwidge Dodgson ('Lewis Carroll') takes up photography as a hobby
 * August 25 – Dante Gabriel Rossetti first encounters Fanny Cornforth (Sarah Cox) in a London pleasure garden; the following day he sketches her head in his studio for the figure of a prostitute in his unfinished painting Found
 * December 2 – The National Portrait Gallery, London, is established
 * December 8 – Édouard Manet opens his own studio
 * Owen Jones publishes The Grammar of Ornament, illustrated in chromolithography

Awards

 * Austrian Imperial Prize for Sculpture – Joseph Boehm

Works



 * Ivan Aivazovsky – A Strong Wind
 * William-Adolphe Bouguereau – La Danse (approximate date)
 * Ford Madox Brown – Take your Son, Sir! (unfinished)
 * Philip Hermogenes Calderon – Broken Vows
 * Samuel Colman – Meadows and Wildflowers at Conway
 * John Faed – Portrait of George Washington Taking the Salute at Trenton
 * William Powell Frith – Many Happy Returns of the Day
 * Hiroshige – One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (ukiyo-e woodblock print series begins publication)
 * Arthur Hughes – April Love
 * William Holman Hunt – The Scapegoat (large version)
 * Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
 * Madame Moitessier
 * La Source
 * Jozef Israëls – Passing Mother's Grave (Langs Moeders Graf)
 * Sir Edwin Landseer – Saved
 * Baron Carlo Marochetti – Richard Coeur de Lion (statue)
 * John Everett Millais
 * Autumn Leaves
 * The Blind Girl
 * Peace Concluded
 * Jean-François Millet – Shepherdess Seated on a Rock
 * Adeline Harris Sears - Quilt, Tumbling Blocks with Signatures pattern (quilt begun)
 * Eugene von Guerard – View of Geelong
 * Henry Wallis – The Death of Chatterton

Births

 * January 7 – Charles Harold Davis, American landscape painter (died 1933)
 * January 8 – Elizabeth Taylor, American painter (died 1932)
 * January 12 – John Singer Sargent, Florentine-born American portrait painter (died 1925)
 * February 29 - John Ward Dunsmore, American painter (died 1945)
 * March 8 – Colin Campbell Cooper, American impressionist painter (died 1937)
 * March 9 – Tom Roberts, Australian painter (died 1931)
 * March 11 – Georges Petit, French art dealer (died 1920)
 * May 20 – Henri-Edmond Cross, French neo-impressionist painter (died 1910)
 * October 9 - F. W. Pomeroy, English sculptor (died 1924)
 * October 28
 * Carolina Benedicks-Bruce, Swedish sculptor (died 1935)
 * Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, American portrait and genre painter (died 1942)
 * November 6 – Jefferson David Chalfant, American trompe-l'œil painter (died 1931)
 * November 11 - Alfred Drury, English sculptor (died 1944)
 * November 18 – Joakim Skovgaard, Danish painter (died 1933)
 * November 21 – Eveleen Tennant, English portrait photographer (died 1937)
 * Undated – Harry Fidler, English equine painter (died 1935)

Deaths

 * January 4 – David d'Angers (Pierre-Jean David), French sculptor and engraver (born 1788)
 * April 5 – František Horčička, Czech history and portrait painter (born 1776)
 * April 27 – Louis Joseph César Ducornet, French painter (used his feet) (born 1806)
 * July 4 – István Ferenczy, Hungarian sculptor (born 1792)
 * July 19 – Henry Aston Barker, Scottish landscape and panorama painter (born 1774)
 * July 22 – Thomas Doughty, American landscape painter (born 1793)
 * September 1 – Sir Richard Westmacott, English sculptor (born 1775)
 * October – Rafael Tegeo, Spanish Neoclassical painter (born 1798)
 * October 8 – Théodore Chassériau, French Romantic painter (born 1819)
 * October 10 – Gim Jeong-hui, Korean calligrapher and artist (born 1786)
 * October 25 – Naitō Toyomasa, Japanese sculptor of netsuke from Tanba Province (born 1773)
 * October 28 – Johann Peter Krafft, German-Austrian painter (born 1780)
 * November 4 – Hippolyte Delaroche, French painter (born 1797)
 * November 6 – Cephas Thompson, American portrait painter (born 1775)
 * November 13 – Ludwig Buchhorn, German painter and engraver (born 1770)
 * November 21 – Charles de Steuben, French painter (born 1788)
 * November 23 – Thomas Seddon, English landscape painter (born 1821)
 * date unknown
 * Pieter Godfried Bertichen, Dutch painter and lithographer (born 1796)
 * Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Duchesne, French painter and miniaturist (born 1770)
 * Elisabeth Charlotta Karsten, Swedish and Russian painter (born 1789)
 * Frederick Nash, English painter and draughtsman (born 1782)