# 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)
* Giovanni Boldini - Marchesa Luisa Casati, with a greyhound
* Pierre Bonnard – Woman in a Blue Hat
* Constantin Brâncuși
** The Kiss (sculpture)
** The Wisdom of the Earth (wood sculpture)
* Georges Braque
** Houses at l'Estaque
** 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
* John Singer Sargent – Portrait of Arthur Balfour
* 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

## Births
### 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)