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.^[1]
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."^[2]
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.^[3]
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.^[4]
Australian painter Arthur Streeton marries violinist Nora Clench.

Works

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).^[5]
December 23 – Yousuf Karsh, Armenian-Canadian photographer (d. 2002).

January 9 – Wilhelm Busch, German humorist, poet, illustrator and painter (born 1832)^[6]
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)^[7]
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)