1746 in art

Events from the year 1746 in art.

• The Venetian painter Canaletto moves to London, beginning a nine-year stay in England to be closer to his market.^[1]
• The French philosopher Charles Batteux publishes Les beaux-arts réduits à un même principe in Paris, putting forward for the first time the idea of les beaux arts, the fine arts.^[2]

• Canaletto
  • A Most Beautiful View of the City of London Taken Through One of the Centres of the Arches of the New Bridge at Westminster (Alnwick Castle, Northumberland)
  • Westminster Bridge, with the Lord Mayor's Procession on the Thames (c.1746-47; Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut)
• Elias Gottlob Haussmann – Johann Sebastian Bach
• Thomas Hudson – Theodore Jacobsen
• John Smybert – Sir William Pepperrell, Bt
• Giovanni Battista Tiepolo - St. Catherine of Siena^[3]

• March 9 – François-Nicolas Delaistre, French sculptor (died 1832)
• March 22 – Gerard van Spaendonck, Dutch painter (died 1822)
• March 30 – Francisco Goya, Aragonese Spanish painter and printmaker (died 1828)
• June 6 – Francesco Saverio Mergalo, Italian portrait painter of the Rococo or late-Baroque period (died 1786)
• October 22 – James Northcote, English painter (died 1831)
• November 11 – Jean Guillaume Moitte, French sculptor (died 1810)
• December 30 – François-André Vincent, French painter (died 1816)
• date unknown
  • Luis Paret y Alcázar, Spanish painter of the late-Baroque or Rococo period (died 1799)
  • Anthonie Andriessen, Dutch landscape painter (died 1813)
  • William Ashford, British painter who worked exclusively in Ireland (died 1824)
  • Domenico Aspari, Italian painter and engraver (died 1831)
  • Etienne Aubry, French painter of primarily portraits and genre subjects (died 1781)
  • Ramón Bayeu, Spanish Neoclassicist painter (died 1793)
  • John Bogle, Scottish miniature painter (died 1803)
  • Joseph Boze, French portrait and miniature painter (died 1826)
  • Teodor Ilić Češljar, one of the best late Baroque and Rococo Serbian painters from the region of Vojvodina (died 1793)
  • Balthasar Anton Dunker, German landscape painter and etcher (died 1807)
  • Mauritius Lowe, British painter and engraver (died 1793)
  • Xi Gang, renowned Chinese calligrapher and painter in Qing Dynasty (died 1803)
  • Philippe-Laurent Roland, French sculptor (died 1816)
  • Michael Angelo Rooker, English oil and watercolour painter, illustrator and engraver (died 1801)
  • Henry Walton, British painter and art dealer (died 1813)

• February 22 – Guillaume Coustou the Elder, French sculptor and academician (born 1677)
• March 20 – Nicolas de Largillière, French painter (born 1656)
• March 29 – Matteo Ripa, painter, engraver and missionary (born 1682)
• June 8 – Giacomo Leoni, architect (born 1686)
• July 30 – Francesco Trevisani, Italian painter of frescoes (born 1656)
• December 31 – Antonio Baroni, Italian painter active in Verona (born 1678)
• date unknown
  • Domenico Bocciardo, Italian painter, active in Genoa (born 1680)
  • Jan Baptist Bosschaert, Flemish painter (born 1667)
  • Sebastiano Galeotti, peripatetic Italian painter (born 1656)
  • Francesco Antonio Xaverio Grue, Italian potter and painter (born 1686)
  • Theodor van Pee, Dutch painter (born 1668)