1848 in art

Events from the year 1848 in art.

• April 10 – John Ruskin marries Effie Gray in Perth, Scotland.^[1]
• September – John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti found the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in the former's family home in Gower Street (London).
• c. October – The first frescoes of scenes from English literature in the Poets' Hall of the Palace of Westminster^[2] are completed: Charles West Cope's Griselda's first Trial of Patience and John Callcott Horsley's Satan touched by Ithuriel's Spear while whispering evil dreams to Eve.
• December 10 – The Leipzig Art Association opens the Städtische Museum.
• In Cambridge, England, the Fitzwilliam Museum's Founder's Building (designed by George Basevi and completed by C. R. Cockerell) is opened.
• In Copenhagen, Denmark, the Thorvaldsen Museum of sculpture (designed by Michael Gottlieb Bindesbøll) is opened.
• In England, John Webb Singer establishes the Frome Art Metal Works, a foundry that becomes Morris Singer.

• Ivan Aivazovsky – Battle of Chesma
• Herman Wilhelm Bissen – Den Danske Landsoldat
• Karl Bryullov – Self-portrait
• Charles West Cope – Cardinal Wolsey's Reception at Leicester Abbey
• David Cox – Crossing the Sands
• Thomas Crawford - Mexican Girl Dying
• Edward Hicks – The Cornell Farm
• Holman Hunt – The Flight of Madeline and Porphyro during the Drunkenness attending the Revelry, Eve of Saint Agnes
• Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres – Baronne de Rothschild
• August Kopisch – The Pontine Marshes at Sunset
• Emanuel Leutze - The Storming of Teocalli by Cortez and his Troops
• Jean-François Millet
  • The Winnower
  • The Captivity of the Jews in Babylon (later covered by The Young Shepherdess in 1870 due to a scarcity of materials during the Franco-Prussian War; rediscovered in 1984 by x-ray at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts)
• Samuel Palmer – The Water Mill
• Ferdinand Richardt
  • Frederiksborg Castle
  • Kronborg Castle
• Théophile Schuler – The Chariot of Death (painting, completed in 1851)
• John Evan Thomas – Death of Tewdric Mawr, King of Gwent (sculpture)
• Philipp Veit – Germania
• Richard Caton Woodville – Politics in an Oyster House

• January 13 – Lilla Cabot Perry, American painter (died 1933)
• February 18 – Louis Comfort Tiffany, American stained glass artist (died 1933)
• March 1 – Augustus Saint-Gaudens, American sculptor (died 1907)
• March 14 – Lise Tréhot, French art model died 1922)
• March 18 – Princess Louise, member of the British Royal Family and sculptor (died 1939)
• March 22 – Sarah Purser, Irish painter and stained-glass maker (died 1943)
• April 29 – Raja Ravi Varma, Indian painter (born 1906)
• June 8 – Paul Gauguin, French post-Impressionist painter (died 1903)
• August 10 – William Harnett, Irish American trompe l'oeil painter (died 1892)
• August 19 – Gustave Caillebotte, French painter and arts patron (died 1894)
• September 26 – Helen Allingham, English painter and illustrator (died 1926)
• October 3 – Henry Lerolle, French painter and arts patron (died 1929)
• date unknown
  • Giovanni Battista Amendola, Italian-born sculptor (died 1887)
  • Helen Thornycroft, English painter (died 1937)

• January 14 – Robert Adamson, Scottish pioneer photographer (born 1821)
• February 7 – Christen Købke, Danish painter (born 1810)
• February 11 – Thomas Cole, American landscape painter (born 1801)
• February 29 – Louis-François, Baron Lejeune, French general, painter and lithographer (born 1775)
• March 23 – Julien-Joseph Ducorron, Belgian landscape painter (born 1770)
• March 29 – Martinus Rørbye, Danish genre painter (born 1803)
• May 17 – Jan Frans Eliaerts, Flemish painter of animals, flowers and fruit (born 1761)
• May 30 – Antonio Basoli, Italian painter, interior designer, engraver and professor (born 1774)
• June 28 – Jean-Baptiste Debret, French painter of lithographs depicting the people of Brazil (born 1768)
• August 15 – Pyotr Sokolov, Russian aquarelle portraitist (born 1791)
• August 20 – Keisai Eisen, Japanese ukiyo-e artist (born 1790)
• November 14 – Ludwig Michael Schwanthaler, German sculptor (born 1802)
• December 13 – John Ternouth, English sculptor (born 1796)