Events in the year 1808 in Art.

• May 2 and May 3 – In Spain the guerrilla resistance movement against the French forces of Napoleon Bonaparte begins; immortalized in 1814 by Francisco Goya's Third of May 1808.
• April 5 – John James Audubon marries Lucy Bakewell.^[1]
• The Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, is given the title of Royal Academy of Fine Arts by King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria.
• The Rijksmuseum moves from The Hague to Amsterdam, where it is located temporarily at the Royal Palace.^[2]
• Thomas Phillips is elected to the Royal Academy.

• François Joseph Bosio – Statue of Cupid with a bow (Hermitage Museum)
• Antonio Canova – Venus Victrix (marble reclining nude)
• Richard Cosway – Portrait miniature of Arthur Wellesley
• François-Xavier Fabre – The Judgement of Paris (approximate date)
• Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson
  • The Entombment of Atala
  • François-René de Chateaubriand
  • Hortense de Beauharnais
• Francisco Goya – Prison Interior
• Antoine-Jean Gros – Napoléon on the Battlefield of Eylau
• Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
  • The Bather
  • Oedipus explains the riddle of the Sphinx
• Thomas Lawrence – Portrait of the Children of Ayscoghe Boucherett
• Edouard Pingret – Portrait of Napoleon I of France

• Johann Dominicus Fiorillo – Geschichte der zeichnenden Künste.
• Robert Blair – The Grave, with illustrations from designs by William Blake (including A Vision of the Last Judgment).
• Augustus Charles Pugin & Thomas Rowlandson – Volume 1 of The Microcosm of London, illustrated in aquatint from watercolours produced jointly by Pugin & Rowlandson and published by Rudolph Ackermann in London.

• February 5 – Carl Spitzweg, German Biedermeier painter (died 1885)
• February 26 – Honoré Daumier, French painter, sculptor and illustrator (died 1879)
• March 6 – Sofia Adlersparre, Swedish painter (died 1862)
• July 12 – Edward Troye, Swiss-born American equine painter (died 1874)
• December 14 – Édouard De Bièfve, Belgian painter (died 1882)
• Date unknown – Nikola Aleksić, Serbian portraitist in the Biedermeier artistic tradition and the Nazarene movement of 19th century German painters (died 1873)

• February 10 – Hugh Douglas Hamilton, Irish portrait artist (born 1740)
• March 1 – Fredrika Eleonora von Düben, Swedish textile artist, member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts (born 1738)
• March 3 – Anton von Maron, Austrian painter active in Rome (born 1733)
• April 10 – Jean-Laurent Mosnier, French painter and miniaturist (born 1743)
• April 15 – Hubert Robert, French painter (born 1733)
• April 26 – Jean-Baptiste Pillement, French Rococo painter, designer and engraver (born 1728)
• June 1 – Jacques Kuyper, Dutch printmaker, painter, draftsman, watercolourist, etcher, musician, and composer (born 1761)
• June 6 – Magdalene Bärens, Danish still life and flower painter (born 1737)
• December 4 – Karl Ludwig Fernow, German art critic (born 1763)
• December 18 – Christina Chalon, Dutch painter and etcher (born 1748)
• date unknown – Samuel Shelley, English miniaturist and watercolour painter (born 1750)