Events from the year 1846 in art.

Events

• Edward Lear publishes Illustrated Excursions to Italy and is made Drawing Master to Queen Victoria.
• The Wellington Statue by Matthew Cotes Wyatt is erected at its original location in London's Hyde Park Corner.

Works

• Ivan Aivazovsky – Battle of Navarino
• Thomas Cole – Catskill Landscape
• William Etty – Musidora: The Bather 'At the Doubtful Breeze Alarmed' (Tate Britain version)
• Jean-Léon Gérôme – Young Greeks at a Cockfight
• Louis Hersent – Portrait of Delphine Gay
• Edward Hicks – Noah's Ark
• John Everett Millais – Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru (Tate Britain)
• Jean-François Millet – Prometheus Unbound
• Rembrandt Peale – Self-portrait
• Eliseo Sala – Pia de' Tolomei
• Giovanni Strazza – Ishmael Abandoned in the Desert (completed).^[1]
• George Frederic Watts – Paolo and Francesca

Births

• March 17 – Kate Greenaway, English illustrator (died 1901)^[2]
• May 3 – Sir Edmund Elton, 8th Baronet, English studio potter (died 1920)
• May 21 – Luc-Olivier Merson, French painter (died 1920)
• October 14 – Albert Schickedanz, Austro-Hungarian architect and painter in the Eclectic style (died 1915)
• October 28 – Albert Dubois-Pillet, French Neo-impressionist painter (died 1890)
• November 3 – Elizabeth Thompson, British painter (died 1933)
• December 9 – John Macallan Swan, English painter and sculptor (died 1910)

Deaths

• January 22 – Louis-Pierre Baltard, French architect and engraver (born 1764)
• April 16 – Christian Duttenhofer, German engraver (born 1778)
• June 8 – Rodolphe Töpffer, Swiss painter and cartoonist (born 1799)
• June 22 – Benjamin Haydon, English historical painter and writer (born 1786; suicide)
• July 16 – Vasily Demut-Malinovsky, Russian sculptor in the Empire style (born 1779)
• August 11 – Bartolomé Montalvo, Spanish painter specializing in landscapes, hunted animals and still lifes (born 1769)
• August 12 – John Caspar Wild, Swiss-born American landscape painter and lithographer (born 1804)
• October 5 – Henri van der Haert, Belgian portrait painter, sculptor, illustrator and engraver (born 1790)^[3]
• December 12 – Charles Alexandre Lesueur, French artist and explorer (born 1778)
• date unknown – Pál Balkay, Hungarian painter and teacher (born 1785)