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 ("the Eight") 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" (cubisme).
 * 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 (England) 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 (for the second time) Adolf Hitler's application to study painting.
 * Australian painter Arthur Streeton marries violinist Nora Clench.

Works



 * George Bellows – Steaming Streets
 * László Beszédes – Joseph (slave) (sculpture)
 * Pierre Bonnard – Woman in a Blue Hat
 * Constantin Brâncuși
 * The Kiss (sculpture)
 * The Wisdom of the Earth (wood sculpture)
 * Georges Braque – Le Viaduc de L'Estaque
 * Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis
 * Fantasy (triptych)
 * Prelude and Fugue (diptych )
 * 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 (bronze)
 * 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 (two versions)
 * Daniel Chester French – Statue of George Frisbie Hoar
 * Florence Fuller – Portrait of Deborah Vernon Hackett (approximate date)
 * 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 (photograph)
 * Ernst Ludwig Kirchner – Street, Dresden
 * Gustav Klimt –
 * The Kiss
 * Schloss by the Water
 * Laura Knight – The Beach
 * Carl Larsson – Gustav Vasas intåg i Stockholm 1523 (Nationalmuseum)
 * Henri Matisse
 * Bathers with a Turtle
 * The Dessert: Harmony in Red ("The Red Room")
 * 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
 * Palace From Molo, Venice
 * San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk
 * Mikhail Nesterov – Portrait of B. M. Nesterov
 * William Ordway Partridge – Statue of Alexander Hamilton (sculpture, New York City)
 * Pierre-Auguste Renoir – Portrait of Ambroise Vollard
 * Otto Schumann – Lewis and Clark Memorial Column (Portland, Oregon)
 * Carl Seffner – Statue of Johann Sebastian Bach (outside St. Thomas Church, Leipzig)
 * Walter Sickert – The Camden Town Murder (group of paintings)
 * 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

January to June

 * January 18 – Humberto Rosa, painter (d. 1982)
 * February 12 – Jean Effel, French painter, caricaturist, illustrator and journalist (d. 1948)
 * February 26 – Tex Avery, American animator, cartoonist, and director (d. 1980).
 * February 28 – William Coldstream, English realist painter (d. 1987).
 * February 29 – Balthus, French modern artist (d. 2001)
 * March 13
 * Rita Angus, New Zealand painter (d. 1970)
 * Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Portuguese-French abstract painter (d. 1992)
 * March 19 – George Rodger, English photographer (d. 1995)
 * March 23 – Cecil Collins, English painter and printmaker (d. 1989)
 * May 9 – Mary Scheier, American sculptor and academic (d. 2007)
 * May 16 – Anne Bonnet, Belgian painter (d. 1960)
 * June 24 – Helen Lundeberg, painter (d. 1999)

July to December

 * July 6 – Sam Vanni, Finnish painter (d. 1992)
 * July 8 – Kaii Higashiyama, Japanese painter and writer (d. 1999)
 * July 9 – Minor White, American photographer (d. 1976).
 * July 22 – Claire Falkenstein, American sculptor and painter (d. 1997).
 * August 22 – Henri Cartier-Bresson, French photographer (d. 2004).
 * August 28
 * Edith Tudor Hart, born Edith Suschitzky, Austrian-born photojournalist and communist agent in Britain (d. 1973).
 * Roger Tory Peterson, American naturalist, ornithologist, artist and educator (d. 1996).
 * August 30 – Leonor Fini, Argentine-born surrealist painter (d. 1996).
 * September 6 – Korczak Ziolkowski, Polish American sculptor (d. 1982).
 * September 14 – Peter Watson, English arts benefactor (k. 1956)
 * October 1 – Nicholas Marsicano, American painter (d. 1991).
 * October 21 – Jorge Oteiza, Spanish sculptor, painter, designer and writer (d. 2003).
 * October 27 – Lee Krasner, American abstract expressionist painter (d. 1984).
 * November 4 – EQ Nicholson, born Elsie Q. Myers, English textile designer and painter (d. 1992).
 * November 19 – Gisèle Freund, born Gisela Freund, German-born photographer (d. 2000).
 * December 3 – Victor Pasmore, English artist and architect (d. 1998).
 * December 23 – Yousuf Karsh, Armenian-Canadian photographer (d. 2002).

Full date unknown

 * Madiha Omar, Iraqi artist (d. 2005)
 * Myron Stout, American abstract painter (d. 1987)
 * Umaña, Colombian artist (d. 1994).

Deaths

 * January 9 – Wilhelm Busch, German humorist, poet, illustrator and painter (born 1832)
 * January 13 – Hashimoto Gahō, Japanese painter of the Kanō school (b. 1835)
 * January 19 – Roberto Bompiani, Italian painter and sculptor (b. 1821)
 * January 28 – Sidney Paget, British illustrator (b. 1860)
 * April 13 – Aasta Hansteen, Norwegian painter, writer, and early feminist (b. 1824)
 * June 1 – Allen Butler Talcott, American painter (b. 1867)
 * July 17 - Joseph Henderson, Scottish landscape painter (b. 1832)
 * August 30 – Giovanni Fattori, Italian painter and printmaker (b. 1825)
 * November 3 – Harro Magnussen, German sculptor (born 1861)
 * November 4 – Richard Gerstl, Austrian painter and draughtsman (b. 1883)
 * November 24 – Charles Henry Turner, American watercolourist and oil painter (b. 1848)
 * December 5 – Ernest Hébert, French painter (b. 1817)
 * December 27 – František Bohumír Zvěřina, Czech painter (b. 1835)
 * date unknown
 * Leopoldo Costoli, Italian sculptor (b. 1850)
 * George Earl, British painter of sporting animals (b. 1824)