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.
November – Georges Braque exhibits at Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler's Paris gallery; critic Louis Vauxcelles describes him as "reducing everything... to geometric schemas, to cubes."
Hugh Lane founds the Dublin City Gallery, the world's first to display only modern art.
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.
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
André Derain – Landscape in Provence
Herbert James Draper – The Water Nymph
Thomas Eakins – William Rush and His Model (two versions)
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
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
The Grand Canal, Venice
Palace From Molo, Venice
San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk
Mikhail Nesterov – Portrait of B. M. Nesterov
William Ordway Partridge – 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
Douglas Tilden – California Volunteers (sculpture, San Francisco)
Sydney Curnow Vosper – Salem
J. W. Waterhouse – Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May
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)
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 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 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).
Myron Stout, American abstract painter (d. 1987)
Umaña, Colombian artist (d. 1994).
January 13 – Hashimoto Gahō, Japanese painter of the Kanō school (b. 1835)
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 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, painter (b. 1817)
December 27 – František Bohumír Zvěřina, Czech painter (b. 1835)
date unknown
Leopoldo Costoli, sculptor (b. 1850)
George Earl, painter of sporting animals (b. 1824)
1908 in art Wikipedia (Text) CC BY-SA
