Events from the year 1856 in art.

• May 1 – Charles Lutwidge Dodgson ('Lewis Carroll') takes up photography as a hobby
• August 25 – Dante Gabriel Rossetti first encounters Fanny Cornforth (Sarah Cox) in a London pleasure garden; the following day he sketches her head in his studio for the figure of a prostitute in his unfinished painting Found
• December 2 – The National Portrait Gallery, London, is established
• December 8 – Édouard Manet opens his own studio
• Owen Jones publishes The Grammar of Ornament, illustrated in chromolithography

• Austrian Imperial Prize for Sculpture – Joseph Boehm

• Ivan Aivazovsky – A Strong Wind
• William-Adolphe Bouguereau – La Danse (approximate date)
• Ford Madox Brown – Take your Son, Sir! (unfinished)
• Philip Hermogenes Calderon – Broken Vows
• Samuel Colman – Meadows and Wildflowers at Conway
• Édouard Dubufe – The Congress of Paris
• John Faed – Portrait of George Washington Taking the Salute at Trenton
• William Powell Frith – Many Happy Returns of the Day
• Hiroshige – One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (ukiyo-e woodblock print series begins publication)
• Arthur Hughes – April Love
• William Holman Hunt – The Scapegoat (large version)
• Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
  • Madame Moitessier
  • La Source
• Jozef Israëls – Passing Mother's Grave (Langs Moeders Graf)
• Sir Edwin Landseer – Saved
• Baron Carlo Marochetti – Richard Coeur de Lion (statue)
• John Everett Millais
  • Autumn Leaves
  • The Blind Girl
  • Peace Concluded
• Jean-François Millet – Shepherdess Seated on a Rock
• Adeline Harris Sears - Quilt, Tumbling Blocks with Signatures pattern (quilt begun)^[1]
• Eugene von Guerard – View of Geelong
• Henry Wallis – The Death of Chatterton

• January 7 – Charles Harold Davis, American landscape painter (died 1933)
• January 8 – Elizabeth Taylor, American painter (died 1932)
• January 12 – John Singer Sargent, Florentine-born American portrait painter (died 1925)
• February 29 - John Ward Dunsmore, American painter (died 1945)
• March 8 – Colin Campbell Cooper, American impressionist painter (died 1937)
• March 9 – Tom Roberts, Australian painter (died 1931)
• March 11 – Georges Petit, French art dealer (died 1920)
• May 20 – Henri-Edmond Cross, French neo-impressionist painter (died 1910)
• October 9 - F. W. Pomeroy, English sculptor (died 1924)
• October 28
  • Carolina Benedicks-Bruce, Swedish sculptor (died 1935)
  • Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, American portrait and genre painter (died 1942)
• November 6 – Jefferson David Chalfant, American trompe-l'œil painter (died 1931)
• November 11 - Alfred Drury, English sculptor (died 1944)
• November 18 – Joakim Skovgaard, Danish painter (died 1933)
• November 21 – Eveleen Tennant, English portrait photographer (died 1937)
• Undated – Harry Fidler, English equine painter (died 1935)

• January 4 – David d'Angers (Pierre-Jean David), French sculptor and engraver (born 1788)
• April 5 – František Horčička, Czech history and portrait painter (born 1776)
• April 27 – Louis Joseph César Ducornet, French painter (used his feet) (born 1806)
• July 4 – István Ferenczy, Hungarian sculptor (born 1792)
• July 19 – Henry Aston Barker, Scottish landscape and panorama painter (born 1774)
• July 22 – Thomas Doughty, American landscape painter (born 1793)
• September 1 – Sir Richard Westmacott, English sculptor (born 1775)
• October – Rafael Tegeo, Spanish Neoclassical painter (born 1798)
• October 8 – Théodore Chassériau, French Romantic painter (born 1819)
• October 10 – Gim Jeong-hui, Korean calligrapher and artist (born 1786)
• October 25 – Naitō Toyomasa, Japanese sculptor of netsuke from Tanba Province (born 1773)
• October 28 – Johann Peter Krafft, German-Austrian painter (born 1780)
• November 4 – Hippolyte Delaroche, French painter (born 1797)
• November 6 – Cephas Thompson, American portrait painter (born 1775)
• November 13 – Ludwig Buchhorn, German painter and engraver (born 1770)
• November 21 – Charles de Steuben, French painter (born 1788)
• November 23 – Thomas Seddon, English landscape painter (born 1821)
• date unknown
  • Pieter Godfried Bertichen, Dutch painter and lithographer (born 1796)
  • Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Duchesne, French painter and miniaturist (born 1770)
  • Elisabeth Charlotta Karsten, Swedish and Russian painter (born 1789)
  • Frederick Nash, English painter and draughtsman (born 1782)