Events from the year 1908 in art.

• 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.

• 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)
• Edward Robert Hughes – Midsummer Eve
• 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
  • Le Palais Ducal (a series of three paintings)
  • 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

• 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 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).
• 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).

• Madiha Omar, Iraqi artist (d. 2005)
• Myron Stout, American abstract painter (d. 1987)
• Umaña, Colombian artist (d. 1994).

• 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)