1856 in art

Events

• Édouard Manet opens his own studio
• Charles Lutwidge Dodgson ('Lewis Carroll') takes up photography
• Owen Jones publishes The Grammar of Ornament, illustrated in chromolithography
• The National Portrait Gallery, London opens

Awards

• Austrian Imperial Prize for Sculpture – Joseph Boehm

Works

Arthur Hughes – April Love

• 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
• 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
• 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
• Eugene von Guerard – View of Geelong
• Henry Wallis – The Death of Chatterton

Births

• January 7 – Charles Harold Davis, painter (died 1933)
• January 8 – Elizabeth Taylor, painter (died 1932)
• January 12 – John Singer Sargent, painter (died 1925)
• March 8 – Colin Campbell Cooper, painter (died 1937)
• March 9 – Tom Roberts, painter (died 1931)
• March 20 – John Lavery, Irish painter (died 1941)
• May 20 – Henri-Edmond Cross, painter (died 1910)
• October 28 – Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, portrait and genre painter (died 1942)
• November 6 – Jefferson David Chalfant, painter (died 1931)
• Undated – Harry Fidler, painter (died 1935)

Deaths

Henry Wallis – The Death of Chatterton

• January 4 – Pierre Jean David, sculptor and engraver ("David d'Angers") (born 1788)
• April 5 – František Horčička, Czech history and portrait painter (born 1776)
• April 27 – Louis Joseph César Ducornet, painter (used his feet) (born 1806)
• July 4 – István Ferenczy, Hungarian sculptor (born 1792)
• July 19 – Henry Aston Barker, landscape and panorama painter (born 1774)
• July 22 – Thomas Doughty, landscape painter (born 1793)
• September 1 – Sir Richard Westmacott, sculptor (born 1775)
• October – Rafael Tejeo, Spanish Neoclassical painter (born c.1800)
• October 8 – Théodore Chassériau, painter (born 1819)
• October 28 – Johann Peter Krafft, German-Austrian painter (born 1780)
• November 4 – Hippolyte Delaroche, French painter (born 1797)
• November 6 – Cephas Thompson, 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, 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)
  • Kim Jeonghui, Korean calligrapher and artist (born 1786)
  • Elisabeth Charlotta Karsten – Swedish and Russian painter (born 1789)
  • Frederick Nash, English painter and draughtsman (born 1782)
  • Naitō Toyomasa, Japanese sculptor of netsuke from Tamba Province (born 1773)