Events from the year 1868 in art.

• Rodolphe Julian establishes the Académie Julian in Paris.
• Deutsches Gewerbe-Museum zu Berlin established.
• English merchant Francis Cook, 1st Viscount of Monserrate, begins to add paintings to his art collection at Doughty House, Richmond, London.
• Due to debt and eviction, Claude Monet attempts suicide by throwing himself into the Seine river.

• Lawrence Alma-Tadema – Phidias Showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to his Friends
• Frédéric Bazille
  • Self-portrait
  • View of the Village
• Albert Bierstadt
  • Among the Sierra Nevada, California
  • In the Sierras
  • Tyrolean Landscape
  • Yosemite Valley, Yosemite Park (approximate date)
• Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux – Why Born Enslaved! or Why Born a Slave? – French Pourquoi! Naitre esclave? or La Negresse (first conceived)^[1]
• Léon-Alexandre Delhomme – Democritus meditating on the seat of the soul (sculpture)
• Lowes Cato Dickinson – Gladstone's Cabinet of 1886
• Lot Flannery – Abraham Lincoln (marble, Washington, D.C.)
• Jean-Léon Gérôme – The Execution of Marshal Ney
• George P. A. Healy – The Peacemakers
• Holman Hunt – Isabella and the Pot of Basil (large and small versions)
• Charles-Auguste Lebourg – The Child and the Grasshopper (marble)
• Édouard Manet
  • The Balcony
  • Luncheon in the Studio (Neue Pinakothek, Munich)
  • Mme. Manet at the Piano (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)
  • Portrait d’Émile Zola (Musée d’Orsay, Paris)
  • Portrait of Théodore Duret (Musée du Petit Palais, Paris)
• John Everett Millais – Vanessa
• Claude Monet – On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt
• Albert Joseph Moore
  • Azaleas
  • A Greek Play (tempera panel for proscenium of Queen's Theatre, Long Acre, London)
• Elisabet Ney – King Ludwig II of Bavaria (sculpture)
• Vasily Perov – At the Railroad
• Val Prinsep – A Venetian Lover
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir
  • In the Summer (The Bohemian girl)
  • The Boy with the Cat
  • Skaters in the Bois de Boulogne
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti
  • The Blue Silk Dress (Walker Art Gallery (National Museums Liverpool))
  • Lady Lilith (original version)
  • Pia de' Tolomei
• Frederick Sandys – Medea
• James Tissot – Le Balcon du Cercle de la rue Royale
• Frederick Walker – The Vagrants

• April 6 – Helen Hyde, American etcher and engraver (died 1919)
• April 12 – Ella Gaunt Smith, American doll-maker (died 1932)
• April 21 – Alfred Henry Maurer, American modernist painter (suicide 1932)
• April 28 – Émile Bernard, French Post-Impressionist painter (died 1941)
• June 5 – Johan Thorn Prikker, Dutch art nouveau painter and stained-glass artist (died 1932)
• June 18 – Georges Lacombe, French sculptor and painter (died 1916)
• July 16 – Willy Gretor, born Vilhelm Petersen, Danish-born painter and art dealer (died 1923)
• October 8
  • Fidus (Hugo Reinhold Karl Johann Höppener), German graphic designer (died 1948)
  • Max Slevogt, German artist (died 1932)
• November 11 – Édouard Vuillard, French painter (died 1940)
• November 23 – Mary Brewster Hazelton, American portrait painter (died 1953)

• January 15 – Lucie Ingemann, Danish religious painter (born 1792)
• January 28 – Adalbert Stifter, Austrian writer, poet, painter, and pedagogue (born 1805)
• February 14 – Emil Bærentzen, Danish portrait painter and lithographer (born 1799)
• February 21 – Giuseppe Abbati, Italian painter (born 1836)
• February 26 – Georg Heinrich Busse, German landscape painter and engraver (born 1810)
• March – John Burnet, Scottish engraver and painter (born 1781/1784)
• March 10 – Herman Wilhelm Bissen, Danish sculptor (born 1798)
• March 29 – Felix Slade, English lawyer, art collector and founder of the Slade School of Art (born 1788)
• May 2 – James Wilson Carmichael, English marine painter (born 1800)
• May 24 – Emanuel Leutze, German American painter (born 1816)
• August 10
  • George Cattermole, English illustrator and watercolourist (born 1800)
  • Adah Isaacs Menken, American actress, painter and poet (born 1835)
• September 13 – Richard Rothwell, Irish portrait and genre painter (born 1800)
• September 13 – Angélique Mezzara, French portrait painter and miniaturist (born 1793)
• September 27 – August Piepenhagen, German painter active in Bohemia (born 1791)
• October 10 – François-Édouard Picot, French historic painter (born 1786)
• November 23
  • Claude Victor de Boissieu, French artist and local politician (born 1783)
  • Charles Méryon, French etcher (born 1821)
• December 1 – John Edward Carew, Irish sculptor (born c. 1782)
• date unknown
  • Johann Baptist Dallinger von Dalling, Austrian painter (born 1782)
  • Louis Royer, Austrian Netherlands sculptor (born 1793)