1896 in art

Events

• January 24 – Painter Sir Frederic Leighton is created 1st Baron Leighton in the peerage of the United Kingdom one day before his death in London of angina pectoris.
• February – Edvard Munch moves to Paris and concentrates on printmaking.
• December – Walter Crane publishes Of The Decorative Illustration of Books, Old and New (printed by the Chiswick Press).
• A bout of typhoid fever puts an end to Maurice de Vlaminck's career as a cyclist.
• William Merritt Chase founds Parsons The New School for Design as the Chase School of Art in Greenwich Village, New York.
• At Giverny Claude Monet begins painting his Mornings on the Seine series, which will continue through 1897.
• Interior design gallery Maison de l'Art Nouveau opens in Paris.
• Max Beerbohm publishes Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen in London, his first collection of drawings.
• Bernard Berenson publishes Florentine Painters of the Renaissance.
• The Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Gravers is founded.
• Hubert von Herkomer is made a knight in the United Kingdom.

Works

Pissarro – Pont Boieldieu in Rouen, Rainy Weather

• Harry Bates – equestrian statue of Lord Roberts
• Aubrey Beardsley – Illustrations to Pope's The Rape of the Lock
• Alfred Boucher – Volubilis (sculpture)
• Lovis Corinth – Self-portrait with skeleton
• Paul Dubois – Baptism of Clovis (sculpture in front of Reims Cathedral)
• Thomas Eakins – The Pianist
• Julian Fałat – Self-portrait with palette
• Paul Gauguin
  • Bé bé
  • Te tamari no atua
  • Self-portrait "près du Golgotha"
  • Self-portrait for my friend Daniel
  • Oyez Hui Iesu (carving)
• J. W. Godward
  • Campaspe
  • He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not
• Akseli Gallen-Kallela – The Defense of the Sampo
• Niels Hansen Jacobsen – Trold, der vejrer kristenblod (sculpture)
• Fernand Khnopff
  • The Caress of the Sphinx
  • Posthumous portrait of Marguerite Landuyt
• Juan Luna – Ecce Homo
• Frederick McCubbin – On the wallaby track
• Charles Rennie Mackintosh – Stencilled friezes for Catherine Cranston's Buchanan Street tearooms, Glasgow
• Konstantin Makovsky – Appeal of Kuzma Minin
• Mihály Munkácsy – Ecce homo
• Pablo Picasso – First Communion
• Camille Pissarro – Pont Boieldieu in Rouen, Rainy Weather
• Félicien Rops – Pornocrates (aquatint)
• François-Léon Sicard – Le Bon Samaritain (sculpture)
• Hugo Simberg – The Garden of Death (watercolor and gouache, Ateneum, Helsinki)
• Viktor Vasnetsov
  • Sirin and Alkonost – Birds of Joy and Sorrow
  • The Temptation (fresco, St Volodymyr's Cathedral, Kiev)
• J. W. Waterhouse – Hylas and the Nymphs
• James McNeill Whistler
  • Savoy Pigeons (lithograph)
  • The Thames (lithotint)
  • Waterloo Bridge from the Savoy
  • Westminster from the Savoy (watercolor)
• Anders Zorn – Self-portrait with model

Births

• January 4 – André Masson, French artist (died 1987)
• January 20 – Charles E. Brown, English aviation photographer (died 1982)
• April 14 – Alfredo Volpi, Brazilian Modernist painter (died 1988)
• July 2
  • Quirino Cristiani, Argentine animation director and cartoonist (died 1984)
  • Prudence Heward, Canadian painter (died 1947)
• July 13 – Mordecai Ardon, Israeli painter (died 1992)
• August 4 – José Fioravanti, Argentine monumental sculptor (died 1977)
• August 14 – Eric Grate, Swedish sculptor, painter and graphics artist (died 1983)
• August 15 – Paul Outerbridge, photographer (died 1958)
• September 24 – Camilo Mori, Chilean painter (died 1973)
• December 31 – Cathleen Mann, English portrait painter and costume designer (died 1959)
• Date unknown – Sava Šumanović, Serbian painter (died 1942)

Deaths

• January 4 – Henri Alfred Jacquemart, French sculptor and animalier (born 1824)
• January 25 – Frederic Leighton, English painter and sculptor specialising in classical subjects (born 1830)
• February 5 – Jean-Auguste Barre, French sculptor (born 1811)
• February – John Cooke Bourne, English topographical artist, lithographer and photographer (born 1814)
• April 16 – Viktor Oskar Tilgner, Austrian sculptor (born 1844)
• May 3 – Alfred William Hunt, English painter (born 1830)
• May 5 – Jacob Fjelde, Norwegian American sculptor (born 1855)
• May 15 – Évariste Vital Luminais, French historical painter (born 1821)
• July 7 – Erdmann Encke, German sculptor (born 1843)
• August 13 – Sir John Everett Millais, English pre-Raphaelite painter (born 1829)
• August 14 – Olin Levi Warner, American sculptor (born 1844)
• November 9 – Napoleon Sarony, Canadian American portrait photographer (born 1821)