Events from the year 1844 in art.

Events

• The Gypsotheca Canoviana at the Museo Canova in Possagno is completed.^[1]
• June – Henry Fox Talbot begins publication of The Pencil of Nature, the first book illustrated with photographs from a camera to be commercially published (in London).^[2]
• July 31 – Opening of the Wadsworth Atheneum, which is today the oldest art museum in the United States.^[3]

Works

• József Borsos – Portrait of Kristóf Hegedűs
• Gustave Courbet
  • Portrait of Juliette Courbet (Musée du Petit Palais, Paris)
  • The Hammock
• Honoré Daumier – Les bas bleus ("Bluestockings", series of lithographs)
• Eugène Delacroix – Last Words of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius
• Théodore de Gudin – La Salle's Expedition to Louisiana in 1684
• Joseph Patrick Haverty – Patrick O'Brien: The Limerick Piper
• Carlo Marochetti – Wellington Statue, Glasgow (equestrian bronze)
• Eleuterio Pagliano – İl pepe e il peperoncino
• Hiram Powers – The Greek Slave (marble)
• J. M. W. Turner – Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway (National Gallery, London)
• Robert Walter Weir – Embarkation of the Pilgrims (United States Capitol rotunda, Washington, D.C.)
• William Lindsay Windus - The Black Boy (International Slavery Museum, Liverpool)

Births

• February 20 – Mihály Munkácsy, Hungarian painter (died 1909)
• February 26 – Annie Swynnerton, English painter (died 1933)
• April – Edmund Elisha Case, American painter (died 1919)
• April 14 – Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat, French ceramicist (died 1910)
• May 21 – Henri Rousseau, "Le Douanier Rousseau", French modernist primitive painter (died 1910)
• May 22 – Mary Cassatt, American Impressionist painter (died 1926)
• July 25
  • Thomas Eakins, American painter, photographer and sculptor (died 1916)
  • Amanda Sidwall, Swedish painter (died 1892)
• July 31 – Léon Augustin Lhermitte, French genre painter (died 1925)
• August 5 – Ilya Repin, Russian painter and sculptor (died 1930)
• September 20 – William H. Illingworth, American photographer (died 1893)
• October 22 – Lady Margaret Forrest, French-born Australian patron of the arts (died 1929)
• October 25 – Viktor Oskar Tilgner, Austrian sculptor (died 1896)
• October 28 – Moses Jacob Ezekiel, American sculptor (died 1917)
• date unknown – Susan Isabel Dacre, English painter (died 1933)

Deaths

• January 8 – Ferdinand Piloty, German lithographer (born 1786)
• January 18 – Henry Perronet Briggs, English portrait and historical painter (born 1793)
• February 21 – Jacques-Edme Dumont, French sculptor (born 1761)
• March 6 – Francis Nicholson, English landscape painter (born 1753)
• March 24 – Bertel Thorvaldsen, Danish sculptor (born 1770)
• May 2 – William Beckford, English novelist, patron art critic (born 1760)
• May 5 – Andrew Geddes, British painter (born 1783)
• May 14 – Robert Hills, English painter and etcher (born 1769)
• July 23 – Christian Gobrecht, American engraver (born 1785)
• August 6 – Samuel Drummond, British painter especially portraits and marine genre works (born 1766)
• August 28 – Giuseppe Bernardino Bison, Italian painter, especially of history pieces, genre depictions, and whimsical and imaginary landscapes (born 1762)
• October 14
  • Adélaïde Victoire Hall, French painter (born 1772)^[4]
  • Jan Baptiste de Jonghe, Belgian landscape painter (born 1785)
• November 2 – Sir Augustus Wall Callcott, English landscape painter (born 1779)^[5]
• November 18 – Antonín Machek, Czech painter (born 1775)
• date unknown
  • Arnoldus Bloemers, Dutch painter of flowers, fruit, and animals (born 1792)
  • Giovacchino Cantini, Italian engraver (born c.1780)
  • Frédéric Théodore Faber, Belgian landscape and genre painter (born 1782)
  • Qian Du, Chinese landscape painter during the Qing dynasty (born 1764)
  • Alexander Johann Dallinger von Dalling, Austrian painter (born 1783)